If his previous work implies a stacked deck, it stays vague about who stacked it. Anora just tells us: It was the ultrarich.

Sean Baker's new film Anora had the highest per-screen average of 2024, with $90,000 on six screens for a total gross of $540,000.

Throughout his career, Sean Baker has focused his lens on characters often left out of the mainstream, providing intimate looks at the lives of those marginalized or considered outsiders. Sex workers are some of his main subjects,

Sean Baker is scrappy. For years, the writer-director has been making independent films about marginalized groups, from undocumented immigrants to sex workers. He casts his own movies, working with friends and talent he finds on social media.

Sean Baker’s film Anora won the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival — the latest in the director’s acclaimed narratives about sex workers that include Tangerine, The Florida Project, and Red Rocket. But Anora might be his most inviting, accessible work yet.

Sean Baker's “Anora” is by wide consensus one of the year’s best films and a best picture contender at the Oscars

As a writer and director, Baker has dedicated much of his career to elucidating the subtleties of figures like Ani who are often relegated to the background. He’s allowed us to peer inside the fictional lives of trans sex workers on Hollywood Boulevard in his 2015 breakout “ Tangerine ,

That ends this weekend, when Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or winner Anora opens in New York and Los Angeles. To commemorate the occasion, here are 10 questions — one for each of GoldDerby’s top 10 Best Picture contenders — that remain unanswered in this “phony war” period of the 2025 Oscar season.