Sean Baker’s Anora sweeps the 97th Academy Awards, with Best Picture, Director, and Best Actress. (File Photo)
New DelhiMar 3, 2025 17:53 IST First published on: Mar 3, 2025 at 17:53 IST
THE final words at the 97th Academy Awards belonged to the director of Anora, Sean Baker. “I want to thank the Academy for recognising a truly independent film. This film was made with the blood, sweat and tears of incredible indie artists. Long live independent film…,” the filmmaker said, before walking away with the Best Picture trophy. This was just one of the several acceptance speeches Baker gave at Los Angeles’ Dolby Theatre on Sunday: He also won the Best Director, Best Editing and Best Original Screenplay awards for the same film
Earlier in the evening, after accepting the award for Best Director, Baker spoke up for movie theatres and indie filmmakers. The self-described “indie lifer” said, “Right now, the theatre-going experience is under threat. Movie theatres, especially independently-owned theatres, are struggling. During the pandemic, we lost nearly 1,000 screens in the US. And we continue to lose them regularly. If we don’t reverse this trend, we’ll be losing a vital part of our culture. This is my battle cry.”
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Before the ceremony, many called this year’s Oscar race “unpredictable”, given the several controversies in the run-up to the evening. For the film industry too, the last couple of years have been turbulent, with studios pulling out of projects and after-effects of the 2023 strikes by actors and writers impacting the movie business. In such a scenario, Anora’s emergence as the top winner, with five Oscars — including the Best Actress trophy for the titular lead played by Mikey Madison — is a remarkable feat. The Anora team turned the evening into a major triumph for “indie cinema”, using the Academy Awards platform — described as “Hollywood’s biggest night” — to call for support for cinemas and filmmakers who “keep making films for the big screen”. Baker appealed: “Distributors, please focus first and foremost on the theatrical releases of your films.”
Set in Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach, Anora tells the story of a scrappy sex worker who marries the son of a Russian oligarch. The film — a dramedy that turns the Cinderella story on its head — premiered during the Cannes Film Festival last year and bagged its top honour, the Palme d’Or. Since then, multiple honours have followed for Anora, which has also made money at the box-office.
Made on a $6 million budget, Anora has collected $41 million worldwide, becoming Baker’s highest-grossing film. With the backing of Neon, an independent production and distribution company, the Anora makers have established that an indie film — minus any star power — can make money as well as win accolades. According to Baker, Neon gave his film “a perfect release and focused on the theatrical run first and foremost”. In India, Rana Daggubati’s Spirit Media too came up with a plan to distribute and screen Payal Kapadia’s Cannes-winner All We Imagine as Light. Other filmmakers can learn from the journeys of these two celebrated movies.
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Through his movies, Baker has long chronicled the lives of those who lived on the margins. His debut feature Take Out (2004) was about a day in the life of an undocumented Chinese immigrant who works at a take-out eatery in New York, while Tangerine (2015), which was shot using three iPhone 5S smartphones, is about a transgender sex worker. The much-acclaimed The Florida Project (2017) follows the story of a 6-year-old girl living in a motel with her unemployed single mother.
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Baker’s big Oscar moment marks his rise as a powerful and significant voice in cinema even as he proudly owns his “indie” identity. “Some of us want to make personal films that are intended for theatrical release with subject matter that would never be greenlit by the big studios. We want complete artistic freedom and the freedom to cast who is right for the role, not who’s ]been] forced to cast considering box office value or how many followers they have on social media,” said Baker at the Independent Spirit Awards last month.
Filmmakers and artists using the Oscar platform to drum up support for causes is not new. This year’s ceremony, for example, saw Zoe Saldana, who won the Best Supporting Actress award for her role in Emilia Perez, speak about being “a proud child of immigrant parents with dreams and dignity and hard-working hands”, while the Palestinian-Israeli collective behind No Other Land, which won the Oscar for Best Documentary, sought “a political solution” to the war in Gaza.
Baker has been steadfast in his dedication to indie cinema, as well as the big-screen experience. Will his words spur the industry to be more supportive of projects born out of independent artistic vision and nurtured by an uncompromising spirit? We can only hope.
alaka.sahani@expressindia.com
