Sean Baker becomes the first person to win 4 Oscars for the same movie
Anora won big at this year’s Oscars, taking home 5 in total. It snagged writer, director, producer, and editor Sean Baker the Oscars for Best Original Screenplay, Best Director, Best Editing, and Best Picture, which made history for Baker. It is also worth noting that these are also Baker’s first nominations for director and writer.
Nominated for 6 awards in total, the film’s star Mikey Madison won for Best Actress, and Yura Borisov was nominated for Best Supporting Actor but did not take home the award. Which is, truly, an upset, though understandable given the competition in the category.
The only other people who have achieved 4 Oscars in the same year are Walt Disney and Bong Joon-Ho for Parasite in 2020. Joon-Ho won three of the awards himself, while the fourth went to South Korea (the win for all international films go to the respective country). Disney’s wins were for four separate films nominated in the same year.
Though Baker made history at the Oscars, this is not his first awards run. Known for other electric, saturated films such as Tangerine and The Florida Project, Baker has had a lucrative string of productions throughout the last decade.
Using his acceptance speech for Best Picture, Baker talked at length about the importance of seeing films in a physical space and keeping the culture and joy for movie theaters alive.
“We’re all here tonight and watching this broadcast because we love movies,” he said. “Where did we fall in love with movies? At the movie theater, watching a film in the theaters with an audience is an experience we can laugh together, cry together, scream and fight together, perhaps sit in devastated silence together…and right now, the theater going experience is under threat…During the pandemic we lost nearly 1,000 screens in the U.S. and we continue to lose them regularly. If we don’t reverse this trend, we’ll be losing a vital part of our culture.”
He also highlighted the marginalized sex worker community with a groundbreaking mention, saying, “I want to thank the sex worker community–they have shared their stories, they have shared their life experiences with me over the years. My deepest respect. Thank you, I share this with you.”
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