Sean Baker makes Oscars history with Anora

Anora director Sean Baker has broken an Oscars record by winning four individual Academy Awards for the same film.

The filmmaker went into the 2025 Oscars as a first-time nominee for Anora and came away as the first person to win four statuettes for the same film.

He personally won Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best Editing and shared the Best Picture honour with his producers Samantha Quan and Alex Coco.

With those wins, Baker tied with Walt Disney, however, the animation legend won four Oscars for four different films in 1953.

Director Bong Joon Ho also came close in 2020 with Parasite, which won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best International Feature Film. However, because the latter award technically goes to the country instead of the filmmaker, the South Korean director personally won three.

Backstage, Baker thanked the Academy for recognising his independent film, which follows a sex worker who marries the son of a Russian oligarch.

"It really feels wonderful that the Academy is recognising independent film," he told reporters. "We always jump into these projects knowing we'll have to compete with films with budgets that are literally a hundred times what we've shot our film for. When we're actually able to do that - get into the same room as other films such as Wicked, a wonderful movie but a totally different film from ours - it means that we're doing something right."

Baker has won many awards for Anora since its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Palme d'Or for best film in May 2024. Heading into the Oscars, he had won top prizes at key precursor events such as the Directors Guild Awards and Writers Guild Awards.

Anora took home five Academy Awards overall, including a surprise Best Actress win for Mikey Madison.