Alexei Toliopoulos<\/a> as a headliner of this year’s Vivid festival, Baker is now a household name.<\/p>\nHe is the only* person to score four Oscars for one film in one night, for 2024’s Mikey Madison-led, sex worker-positive rocky romance, Anora, scooping Best Picture (as producer, alongside his partner, Samatha Quan, and their regular collaborator, Alex Coco), Best Directing, Best Screenplay and Best Editing.<\/p>\n
Baker is also one of only four filmmakers to claim the top Academy Award after winning the Cannes Film Festival’s prestigious Palme d’Or.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/e85449943fd9656568f4c9c26efedf68.jpeg\")
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Baker won four Oscars for Anora at the 2025 Academy Awards. (Mike Coppola\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
But his beginnings were a little more humble.<\/p>\n
Baker’s debut feature, 2000’s Four Letter Words \u2014 featuring a cameo from Anora star Karren Karagulian, who has appeared in almost all his films \u2014 was shot on ‘short ends’ of 35mm, the stuff left over from other movies.<\/p>\n
“Actors would be a quarter of the way through a scene before it would run out,” Baker chuckles.<\/p>\n
While Baker is a fan of shooting on film, he’s made movies any way possible.<\/p>\n
Inspired by the pared-back Dogme 95 movement, co-founded by Danish filmmakers Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, Baker shot 2004’s immigrant tale, Take Out, co-written and directed by Shih-Ching Tsou, on a MiniDV.<\/p>\n
Tangerine, Baker’s 2015 Christmas-set sex worker misadventure, was shot on a souped-up iPhone, as was his recent Penang-set short, Sandiwara, starring Michelle Yeoh.<\/p>\n
“It’s a wonderful tool that can look really cool, so I’m not disrespecting that,” Baker says. “I just love shooting on film.”<\/p>\n
Whatever format emerging filmmakers choose, Baker says the key is to embrace the chaos.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/ee63b0c5fd2975322f2c85dfae24225f.jpeg\")
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Mark Eidelstein and Mikey Madison in Sean Baker’s Anora, which was made for around $US6.5 million but took in almost $US60m at the box office. (
Supplied: IMDB)<\/p>\n
“Don’t panic,” he says. “Instead of running away from surprises, run towards them. Audiences can detect when there’s something real there, an authentic moment.”<\/p>\n
That ethos held true on Anora, which enjoyed a hefty-for-Baker $US6.5 million budget (still dinky compared to a Hollywood blockbuster).<\/p>\n
“I love happenstance and serendipity,” he says. “It excites me. If it’s all too legit, there’s no fun.”<\/p>\n
Unearthing new talent<\/p>\n
Baker’s having a lot of fun, and it’s working in his favour. His next film, Ti Amo!, has been acquired by Warner Bros’ new alternative label, Clockwork, for a rumoured $US22 million.<\/p>\n
An enormous step change, it won’t distract him from telling his very human stories.<\/p>\n
“I’m focused on what it’s like to live in this capitalist society, often through marginalised communities struggling while pursuing the American dream, but not exactly taking the same route as others,” he says.<\/p>\n
For every Willem Dafoe in The Florida Project, Baker loves discovering unknown actors, referencing Spike Lee introducing audiences to Halle Berry and Martin Lawrence.<\/p>\n
“I’ve been extremely lucky in my career, whether it’s Prince Adu in Prince of Broadway, Maya Taylor and Katana Kiki Rodriguez in Tangerine, or Bria Vinaite from The Florida Project,’ Baker says.<\/p>\n
![\"Three](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1f8f39f19645a013453994a8c7dcb616.jpeg\")
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Baker shot his 2015 film Tangerine entirely on a phone. (Supplied)<\/p>\n
“The common denominator is that they all had that enthusiasm. They’re just as hungry as I am, and that’s when someone’s going to give it their all. So then it comes down to making them comfortable on set, and often it’s my wife, Samantha, who’s coaching them, getting them where they need to get so I can just show up.”<\/p>\n
Baker’s not ruling out working on a bigger scale in the future.<\/p>\n
“I want to be able to sleep at night and make the movie that’s most authentic to me, but that might, one day, be something extremely mainstream,” he says.<\/p>\n
He points to Martin Scorsese. “He works with DiCaprio, but at the same time, his subject matter isn’t exactly as accessible as, say, Project Hail Mary, which I also loved.”<\/p>\n
A big booster, Baker recognises the sway he has on social media.<\/p>\n
“Some directors tell me, ‘I haven’t watched a film since 1987,’ but I love the new and want to celebrate emerging filmmakers,” Baker says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“The other day, we went to see Aleshea Harris’s debut, Is God Is; I had to champion [it] because I was so impressed.”<\/p>\n
Sticking to the right path<\/p>\n
The financial security Baker now enjoys has been a long time coming, but he’s eternally grateful for the bumpy road along the way.<\/p>\n
“I broke in my 50s, not my 20s, so perseverance was everything,” he says. “Someone once told me, ‘Cream rises; it just might take a while with you,’ and I thought, ‘All right, I’m going to keep going’.”<\/p>\n
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That astonishing haul of Oscars and the Palme d’Or has been quite the reward.<\/p>\n
“I’ve had about a year and a bit, now, to absorb it, and the further I move away from it, the more I’m just full of gratitude,” Baker says. “It makes me look back at all those years of struggling and thinking, ‘You did take the right path’.”<\/p>\n
He recommends aspiring filmmakers follow their guts, too.<\/p>\n
“Keep believing in yourself because, for a long time, you may be the only one,” he smiles. “Looking back, I’m really happy I held on, because my dreams came true.”<\/p>\n
*Disney ties with Baker with four Oscar wins in one night, but they were for four different films.<\/p>\n
Sean Baker: In Conversation<\/a> is at Sydney Town Hall on June 7 as part of Vivid Sydney.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Growing up in New Jersey before the internet and multiplexes branched into art-house films, Anora filmmaker Sean Baker…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":713402,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[346504,167497,64,63,346503,134,243897,346507,346505,346506,346508,346509,330809],"class_list":["post-713401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-alexei-touliopolous","tag-anora","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-best-picture-oscars","tag-entertainment","tag-sean-baker","tag-sean-baker-director","tag-sean-baker-films","tag-sean-baker-in-conversation","tag-sean-baker-sydney","tag-sean-baker-vivid-sydney","tag-vivid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=713401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/713402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=713401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=713401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=713401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}