American Filmmaker Sean Baker became the first person to win 4 Oscars for a single film.
The Oscars had some tough competition this year, with The Brutalist (10 nominations), Wicked (10 nominations), Conclave, The Substance, and Emilia Perez (13 nominations) giving close competition. There was one film that swept the awards. Anora.
Directed by Sean Baker, the film follows the titular character, a sex worker by profession, who gets a chance at a new life when she gets married to a wealthy Russian client on a whim.
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Out of the six categories it was nominated in, Anora swept the floor of the top five at the Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Editing. The only category it missed out on was Best Supporting Actor, where Yura Borisov lost to Kieran Culkin for his performance in A Real Pain.
Sean Baker, known for critically acclaimed films such as Tangerine (2015), The Florida Project (2017) and Red Rocket (2021), became the first person to win four Academy Awards for a single film.
Mikey Madison won her first-ever nomination and, subsequently, her maiden Oscar for Best Actress, beating Demi Moore (The Substance), Cynthia Erivo (Wicked), Fernanda Torres (I’m Still Here) and Karla Sofia Gascon (Emilia Perez).
What makes Anora a significant win at the Oscars is also the fact that the film was made on a shoestring budget of $6 million (nearly Rs 52 crores). In terms of Hollywood standards, it is a tiny sum.
During his winning speech, Baker highlighted the importance of making independent films during a time when big-budget studio films and franchises dominate the industry and rake in numbers.
“If you’re trying to make independent films, please keep doing it. We need more. This is proof,” Baker said.
Anora‘s win is also significant since it won against blockbuster musical like Wicked, which has raked in a massive $728.4 million, and the sci-fi Dune: Part Two, which collected around $714.4 million at the box office.
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In retrospect, Anora only made $16 million at the box office, a hit nonetheless, but one of the lowest-earning films ever to win Best Picture at the Oscars.
With a small budget like that, the independent film’s impressive win is something to ponder upon, specifically when it comes to the Hindi film industry where most of the budget (almost always way bigger than Anora entire budget + its box office collection) is charged by a ‘star’ as their fees only for the film to bomb at the box office.
