Meet Sean Baker, the 'Anora' director who made Oscar history with his $6 million movie
Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic
- "Anora" director Sean Baker made history at the Oscars on Sunday.
- He won each of his four nominations, including the biggest prize of the night, best picture.
- The indie filmmaker previously told BI he doesn't try to make his films more palatable to studios.
If you didn't know Sean Baker's name before Sunday night, you definitely do now.
The director made history at the 97th Academy Awards on Sunday, becoming the first filmmaker to win four Oscars in one night for the same film. (Walt Disney won four Oscars in 1953, but for four separate films; Bong Joon Ho won four in 2020 for "Parasite," but one was for best international feature, which is technically awarded to the country, not the filmmaker.)
"Anora," a dramedy about a young stripper who impulsively marries the son of a Russian oligarch, snagged Baker statues for best director, best original screenplay, best editing, and best picture. The film's lead, Mikey Madison, also picked up a surprise win, beating out frontrunner Demi Moore in the best actress category.
Though Baker was relatively unknown to the general public until now, the buzzy indie filmmaker didn't come out of nowhere. I spoke to Baker in October, months before "Anora" would sweep the Oscars, about his body of work and the state of moviemaking.
Sean Baker's movies are critically acclaimed, but were largely ignored by major awards bodies before 'Anora'
Neon
After graduating from New York University's filmmaking program in 1998, the New Jersey-born Baker quickly found his niche by focusing on marginalized communities. Half of his features, including "Anora," are specifically about sex workers.
But making his work more palatable and marketable to a wider audience was never on the agenda.
"I was always shooting myself in my foot. I was always doing something that would make my film probably not accessible to the mainstream," Baker said, citing his inclusion of an unsimulated sex scene in 2012's "Starlet," a movie about porn stars, as an example.
Before "Anora," Baker's most successful film in terms of awards recognition was "The Florida Project," his 2017 slice-of-life drama about a 6-year-old girl and her unemployed single mom living out of a budget motel in Kissimmee, Florida, just outside Walt Disney World. As with "Anora" and most of his movies, Baker pulled quadruple duty, directing, writing, producing, and editing.
Though largely regarded as Baker's best work to date, outside of awards from critics' organizations, Baker didn't earn any statuettes for it — only star Willem Dafoe clinched an Oscar nomination for his supporting role as the motel's owner.
Given his track record with flying under the radar, Baker told BI last fall that he was stunned that "Anora" had broken through to mainstream acclaim.
"I thought it was going to be extremely divisive, quite honestly," he said.
Baker is an outspoken supporter of independent film and theatrical releases
Baker made four speeches at the Oscars, thanking his team, his cast, the film's distributor Neon, his fellow producers (including his wife, Samantha Quan), and the sex workers who have opened up their world to him over the years. He also took the opportunity during his best director win to zoom out and give an impassioned plea to support the theatrical experience.
"Watching a film in the theater with an audience is an experience. We can laugh together, cry together, and, in a time in which the world can feel very divided, this is more important than ever," Baker said, adding that the experience is "under threat" with theaters, particularly independently owned ones, closing down at unprecedented rates.
"If we don't reverse this trend, we'll be losing a vital part of our culture," he said.
PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images
Amid ever-shrinking theatrical release windows, Baker implored filmmakers to keep making films with the big screen experience in mind and asked distributors to focus on theatrical releases.
It's something he also touched on during his wins at both the Directors and Producers Guild Awards in February, where he asked his fellow filmmakers to demand 90-day windows for their films to play in theaters. (IndieWire reported that in 2024, the average theatrical window was a mere 32 days across 85 wide-released movies, dropping off over 13% from the previous year.)
Baker has openly criticized Hollywood's risk-averse tendency to bet on blockbusters and IP-driven films over original dramas. That criticism hasn't always come across well, as when Baker told the Associated Press last year that he missed "mature films for adults" that didn't have explosions or superheroes or weren't genre films.
Some took his lament to be a dig at superhero movies and horror films. Baker clarified his stance to BI and bemoaned coming across as "snotty" in that soundbite.
"I didn't in any way mean to be slamming those films. I actually love action films — it's why I went to NYU, to make the next 'Die Hard' or 'RoboCop,'" he told BI. "What I was trying to say is I wish studios were still making other films."
Baker pointed out that it makes sense why studios prioritize those films, knowing that they'll perform better financially. "Genre films essentially are the films that are keeping theaters alive, and therefore I cherish them, and I am so happy they're there," he said. "But I just would love more variety — dramas and dramedies and just everyday human stories."
He maintained that these explosion-less films are just as cinematic, and just as important to see on the big screen surrounded by a crowd of fellow film lovers. "Anora" was Baker's proof of concept: "I want 'Anora' to be something that is better in a theater with a crowd on the big screen."
That "Anora" has been embraced in this way is a huge win for indie filmmaking, one that should serve as a clue to studios that these movies are worth the marketing effort — it's the director's most financially successful film to date, netting over $40 million worldwide on a $6 million budget.
"I'm just trying to make the best film possible," Baker told BI. "When something is too commercial, there's a reason why. It's often watered down in order to reach the widest audience possible. And therefore, it is not as perhaps provocative or edgy, because it needs to be pretty vanilla to reach everybody."
The 97th Academy Awards may have been a fairytale ending for Baker as a filmmaker, but perhaps it will also be the fairy godmother the indies need.
Closing out his acceptance speech for best picture, Baker put it plainly.
"I want to thank the Academy for recognizing a truly independent film. This film was made on the blood, sweat, and tears of incredible indie artists. And long live independent film."
