Sean Baker

A grad­u­ate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Sean Bak­er wrote and direct­ed his first fea­ture film in 2010, Four Let­ter Words, in which he cap­tured the psy­che of a gang of post-ado­les­cent Amer­i­cans gath­ered for an impromp­tu garage par­ty. Four years lat­er, he col­lab­o­rat­ed with Shih-Ching Tsou, who would go on to pro­duce most of his sub­se­quent films, co-writ­ing, co-direct­ing and co-pro­duc­ing Take Out on a micro-bud­get of $3,000. This deep dive into the life of an undoc­u­ment­ed Chi­nese immi­grant rac­ing against the clock to repay a debt was nom­i­nat­ed for the Inde­pen­dent Spir­it John Cas­savetes Award, as was his fol­low­ing fea­ture, Prince of Broad­way, released in 2006.

After direct­ing Star­let, win­ner of the 2013 Inde­pen­dent Spir­it Robert Alt­man Award, Sean Bak­er made his Deauville Film Fes­ti­val debut two years lat­er with Tan­ger­ine, win­ning the Jury Prize. Hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly screened at the Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val, the film depicts the jour­ney of two Los Ange­les sex work­ers and took home two Gotham Awards, with lead actress Mya Tay­lor win­ning the Inde­pen­dent Spir­it Award for Best Sup­port­ing Actress.

In 2017, Sean Bak­er made his Cannes debut in Direc­tors’ Fort­night with The Flori­da Project star­ring Willem Dafoe, who received an Oscar nom­i­na­tion for Best Sup­port­ing Actor, while the film­mak­er won the New York Film Crit­ics Cir­cle Award for Best Direc­tor. He then direct­ed Red Rock­et, which played in offi­cial com­pe­ti­tion at the 2021 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val before screen­ing at Deauville, where it won the Jury and Crit­ics Prize. Last May, Sean Bak­er con­tin­ued his inter­na­tion­al con­se­cra­tion by win­ning the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val for Ano­ra, his eighth fea­ture film.

This year, the Fes­ti­val will show­case inde­pen­dent film­mak­er Sean Bak­er by pre­sent­ing his new fea­ture film Ano­ra, win­ner of this year’s Palme d’Or, as well as four of his ear­ly works nev­er screened in France: Four Let­ter Words, Take Out, Prince of Broad­way and Star­let.

From one project to the next, Sean Bak­er nev­er stops film­ing those left out of the Amer­i­can Dream, be it undoc­u­ment­ed peo­ple in Take Out and Prince of Broad­way, porn indus­try per­form­ers in Star­let and Red Rock­et, or sex work­ers in Tan­ger­ine, The Flori­da Project and Ano­ra, not to men­tion imma­ture young Amer­i­can alpha males in his debut film, Four Let­ter Words.