The winner of best picture and best director for Anora in the 2025 Oscars, Sean Baker has spent his career chronicling marginalised communities. It has made him a leading light of the indie movie scene in the United States.
His film, won five awards – four of them for him – is his latest neorealistic portrayal of society’s underbelly, in which a stripper thinks she has struck it rich with a Russian oligarch’s son.
Anora also won best actress, and Baker himself collected additional gold statuettes for best original screenplay and best editing.
It has been a long road to Hollywood’s grandest stage for Baker, a slight and unfailingly affable character with an encyclopedic knowledge of film, who is known for casting non-actors and real sex workers in his movies.