Anora’s Sean Baker Breaks Oscars’ Huge Record Only 2 Other Filmmakers Could Get Close To

Tables turned quite radically at last night’s Oscar ceremony, making Anora the most acclaimed movie of this year’s awards season, despite a common belief that Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist would sweep the main prizes after all.

It was shocking enough to see Mikey Madison surpassing everyone’s Oscar favourite Demi Moore, but still getting a well-deserved statuette for Best Actress; the ceremony took an even more astounding turn when Sean Baker took home awards for Best Director and Best Picture, also securing a couple more of wins and thus becoming the biggest triumphant of the night.

However, it still wasn’t over for Baker’s raving success as the director made Oscars history that only two other great filmmakers have become a part of before.

Sean Baker Is the First to Win 4 Oscars for 1 Movie

Apart from Mikey Madison’s Best Actress award, Anora took home 4 more prizes for Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Director and Best Picture, with all of those going to Sean Baker who became the first ever director to receive 4 Oscars in the same year and for the same movie.

Quite a similar situation happened at the Oscars ceremony back in 1953 when Walt Disney also was awarded with 4 statuettes, though with the only difference being that the latter took home all those prizes for 4 different movies that were nominated that night — The Living Desert, The Alaskan Eskimo, Bear Country and Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom.

Receiving the award for Best Director, Baker didn’t forget to acknowledge his love for movie theatres that weren’t having the best times since streaming platforms took all of the audiences’ attention.

“We’re all here tonight and watching this broadcast because we love movies. Where did we fall in love with the movies? At the movie theater”, he said, also thanking real movie theatre lover Quentin Tarantino whose decision to cast Mikey Madison in his Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood eventually brought the actress to starring in Anora.

Only 2 Other Renowned Directors Won This Big at Previous Oscars Ceremonies

Sean Baker’s triumph last night is also marked by the fact that the Academy Award for Best Editing usually never goes to a movie’s director whatsoever, and there are only 2 other similar cases in the award’s history.

The most recent one is Alfonso Cuarón’s win in both Best Director and Best Editing categories for his sci-fi thriller Gravity back in 2014; much earlier the same combination of statuettes also went to James Cameron for his monumental hit Titanic in 1998.

Additionally, Parasite’s director Bong Joon Ho was quite close to becoming a record breaker ahead of Baker all the way back in 2020, winning statuettes for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best International Film.

However, the latter still didn’t count as the award went to the country and not the director, thus leaving Joon Ho with only 3 Oscars instead of 4.