Oscars record: four wins in one go for Anora director Sean Baker

Anora director Sean Baker has become the first person to win four Oscars in the same year for the same film. Mikey Madison pulled off the biggest upset, taking best actress for her work on Anora.

Anora director Sean Baker with his four-Oscar haul. Piucture: Getty Images

Anora director Sean Baker has become the first person to win four Oscars in the same year for the same film.

Best director, best original screenplay, best film editing and best picture (as producer) were all Baker’s. The last person to win that many trophies in one year was Walt Disney, who, in 1953, won four Oscars for four films.

Anora, which scooped the Palme d’Or at Cannes, is a bawdy, oddly tender spin on the Cinderella myth, swapping glass slippers for perspex stripper heels.

Starring a ferocious Mikey Madison as Brooklyn sex worker Ani, the film is yet another love letter to the raucous, luminous lives of those on the fringe – territory Baker has made his own since his breakout 2015 film Tangerine, ­famously shot on an iPhone 5.

Baker used his best director speech to mount a defence of the importance of theatrical releases, encouraging distributors, filmmakers and cinemagoers to keep the cinema experience alive. “This film was made on the blood, sweat and tears of incredible indie artists. Long live independent film,” he said.

Best actor winner Adrien Brody, best actress winner Mikey Madison, Zoe Saldana, who claimed the best supporting actress award, and best supporting actor Kieran Culkin. Picture: Getty Images.

Mikey Madison pulled off the biggest upset of the evening, taking the best actress trophy for her work on Anora from Demi Moore, a favourite for her gutsy turn in the feminist body horror The Substance.

Madison was hired by Baker – who often works with non-professional actors – after he saw her in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood. Her performance was honed with the help of real strippers, some of whom joined the Anora team on stage.

The Brutalist received three Oscars. Adrien Brody won best actor for his performance as a Hungarian-Jewish architect and Holocaust survivor. It was his second Oscar win, having become the youngest best actor winner at 29 for playing a Holocaust survivor in 2003’s The Pianist.

Oscars host Conan O'Brien at the end of the awards ceremony. Picture: Richard Harbaugh / AMPAS / AFP

The film also took the awards for best score and best cinematography for Lol Crawley, who resurrected the long-dormant VistaVision format. When The Brutalist premiered at the Venice Film Festival, it arrived in 26 separate canisters weighing 136kg.

Emilia Perez, once the toast of awards season, saw its best picture hopes collapse after a series of old tweets by its star, Karla Sofia Gascon, surfaced. Still, the film managed to pick up two awards – best song and best supporting actress for Zoe Saldana.

Conan O’Brien, in his first stint as Oscars host, delivered the dig: “I love Anora. Anora uses the f-word 479 times. That’s three more than Karla Sofia Gascon’s publicist.”

Wicked may have only won two technical prizes – best production and best costume – but the film’s stars, Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, kicked off the ceremony with a musical medley that took viewers on a journey through the Wizard of Oz universe, with performances of Somewhere Over the Rainbow from the 1939 film, Home from The Wiz, and Defying Gravity, the ballad from Wicked.

Ariana Grande with Wicked star Cynthia Erivo backstage at the 97th annual Oscars at the Dolby Theatre. Picture: John Shearer/97th Oscars/The Academy via Getty Images

Edward Berger’s Conclave, an adaptation of the Robert Harris thriller about papal succession, swept the BAFTAs and the SAG Awards but won only one Oscar: best adapted screenplay. Kieran Culkin won best supporting actor for his performance in A Real Pain, beating Australia’s hope, Guy Pearce, for The Brutalist.

No Other Land, a documentary made by a quartet of Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers, which focused on the forced displacement of Palestinians from their homes in Masafer Yatta, a region in the West Bank, won best documentary. The film, controversial yet critically lauded, has notably struggled to find a US distributor.

Yuval Abraham, the film’s ­Israeli co-director, said: “We made this film together because together our voices are stronger.” He went on to advocate for a “political solution without ethnic ­supremacy, with national rights for both of our people,” adding, “And I have to say, as I am here, the foreign policy in this country is helping to block this path.”