UPDATED with PGA win: Sean Baker won both the PGA Awards‘ and DGA Awards‘ top prizes for Neon’s Anora — on the same night. And if past statistics are a signifier of what’s to come, it is a major indicator for both the Oscars’ Best Director category as well as Best Picture.
Baker’s wild night started at the Beverly Hilton, where he won the Directors Guild’s top prize, the Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Theatrical Feature Film. He then raced to the Fairmont Century Plaza in Century City, where he picked up the PGA’s top trophy, the Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures, alongside his fellow producers Alex Coco and Samantha Quan.
Deadline confirmed that the PGA ceremony delayed its start to accommodate the Anora team, which was coming off taking the Best Picture prize Friday evening at the Critics Choice Awards.
So what does this mean for Baker and Anora‘s chances at the Oscars, where the film has six nominations?
The wins tonight are notable not just because they happened close together: 25 of the past 34 PGA Theatrical Motion Picture winners went on to win Best Picture at the Oscars, including last year’s Oppenheimer, while 19 of the DGA’s past 22 Theatrical Feature winners have gone on to win Oscar Best Director.
And in the history of the Academy Awards, there are only six instances when a Best Picture winner did not have a Best Director Nomination: Wings (1927/28), Grand Hotel (1931/32), Driving Miss Daisy (1989), Argo (2012), Green Book (2018) and CODA (2021).
“My imposter syndrome is skyrocketing right now, as well as my cortisol levels,” Baker said onstage at the DGA Awards after his win there tonight. “It’s such an honor to be recognized by my peers.”
He thanked his directorial team, cast and crew, Neon, the DGA, and then turned to Quan and Coco. “Obviously I’ve tortured you and I’m so sorry,” he said. “They were able to pull off a $6 million film shot on film in New York City in 2023 — almost an impossibility.”
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Baker gave props to his cast “that put everything into it,” especially Mikey Madison, who plays the lead role of Ani (Anora), alongside Yura Borisov, Mark Eydelshteyn, Karren Karagulian and Vache Tovmasyan, in the film about a young woman working in a New York strip club who impulsively marries a younger, rich client, only to find out he is the son of a Russian oligarch, and his family are less than pleased by the union.
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“Working with [Madison] has changed the way I will be directing actors in the future, because of what she gave,” Baker said. “Hearing her incredible ideas … a year before production, what she wanted to bring to the production and what she did bring to it. [She has] an incredible career ahead.”
Baker recalled knowing he wanted to be a director when he saw the burning window sequence from 1931’s Frankenstein. “The next morning I told my mother I wanted to be a director,” he said. “My mother supported me the whole way. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’m making the movies she wanted me to make. I don’t think she’s seen Anora, I don’t want her to see Anora.”
Just down the road at the PGA Awards, Baker continued to rally Coco and Quan as facilitators of his vision.
“I saw them shine as producers,” Baker said in his onstage remarks with the duo at his side. “I saw them make miracles day by day. They never said no to me. They worked it out.”
The Oscars will be held at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles on March 2nd.
Anthony D’Alessandro and Fred Topel contributed to this report.
