“Anora” director, screenwriter and editor Sean Baker won four Oscars at the 97th Academy Awards on Sunday night, a feat only achieved by one other person: Walt Disney.
While Disney won four Oscars for four separate films in 1953 – becoming the first and only person to do so until now – Baker won four Oscars for one film, setting a new record.
Disney, the most decorated Oscar winner of all time, won for best documentary (feature), best documentary (short), best short subject (cartoon) and best short subject (two-reel) at the 26th Academy Awards. He won these awards, respectively, for “Water Birds,” “The Living Desert,” “Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Bloom,” and “Bear Country.”
That year, the film phenom was nominated for six awards for six different films.
Baker’s “Anora” was nominated for six awards: best picture, best original screenplay, best director, best editing, best actress (Mikey Madison) and best supporting actor (Yura Borisov).
Baker edits, directs and writes most of his films and has also served as producer and cinematographer for some. Wearing all of these hats paid off and led him to make history at the Oscars.
The film – which is about a young sex worker from New York who marries the son of a Russian oligarch, before his parents find out and put her Cinderella story in jeopardy – took home five out of the six awards it was nominated for. The only one not nabbed was best supporting actor, which went to Kieran Culkin for “A Real Pain.”
And so, as the writer, editor and director of “Anora,” Baker himself won four Oscars for the film, setting a record for most Oscars won by one person for a single film. Mikey Madison took home the fifth with her best actress win.
When he won the Oscar for best editing, Baker said only three individuals are allowed in the editing room with him.
“Those three people are Samantha Quan, my wife and producer, Alex Coco, my incredible fellow producer, and my dog, Bunson, he gave me some pretty good notes,” Baker joked.
This is the first year Baker himself has been nominated by the Academy. In 2018, Willem Defoe, who starred in Baker’s “The Florida Project,” earned a best supporting actor nomination.
Baker, whose wife, Samathan Quan, co-produced “Anora,” revealed to NPR that he had a $6 million budget for the independent film, distributed by Neon. The film only took 40 days to film – with 10 days of shooting going to one infamous scene inside a mansion in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, according to director of photography Drew Daniels.
The film went on to gross more than $40 million worldwide and also won the Palme d’Or – the highest award for directors of feature films – at the Cannes Film Festival, two BAFTAs and a Critics Choice Award.
During his acceptance speech for best director, Baker encouraged audiences to go back to movie theaters to see films, saying “the theater-going experience is under threat.”
“Watching a film in a theater with an audience is an experience. We can laugh together, cry together. And in a time in which our world can feel very divided, this is more important than ever: It’s a communal experience you simply don’t get at home,” he said.
During his acceptance speech for best original screenplay, he thanked the sex worker community, as the main character in “Anora” works in a strip club and is hired as an escort. “They have shared their stories. They have shared life experiences with me over the years. My deepest respect. Thank you. I share this with you,” he said.
