Sean Baker makes funny, troubling films about people short of money without demanding that they behave well. We rate him highly for that generosity, though his habit of editing his own work can leave good scenes running too long.
Fi1m perspective
The children in The Florida Project (2017) are busy playing and misbehaving around a motel near Disney World. Baker gives them time to enjoy themselves, while their parents’ lack of money remains a worry rather than the subject of every scene. We were moved by Moonee’s pleasure in the place, because her mother’s struggle to keep them housed never quite lets us relax. Lorne Balfe’s music barely registers against the children’s noise, a useful restraint in a film that could so easily insist on our pity.
Take Out (2004), co-directed with Shih-Ching Tsou, had already established his interest in immigrant lives on the margins. The iPhone-shot Tangerine (2015) brought wider attention to his work, but the people remained the point. Street casting and improvisation recur in his work, helping unfamiliar actors seem at ease on screen.
His generosity is tested usefully by Bria Vinaite’s Halley in The Florida Project. She is abrasive enough to wear us down, and Baker and co-writer Chris Bergoch allow her to stay that way. Affection for her daughter does not make her easier company, nor does the writing ask us to approve of everything she does. Vinaite makes Halley’s dwindling patience felt without asking us to forgive it in advance.
In Anora (2024), he turns to a faster, louder comedy, with Mikey Madison as a Brooklyn stripper who marries an oligarch’s son. Baker’s editing makes the courtship a rush of parties, a jet and fireworks. Cinematographer Drew Daniels keeps Ani at the centre of attention rather than gawping at the money, while Stephen Phelps’s production design gives the mansion the air of somewhere bought but barely inhabited. Madison carries the film through the commotion. It is his funniest film.
He is less reliable when deciding what to cut. Editing The Florida Project, he allows episodes to repeat pleasures and worries already understood; in Anora, roughly twenty minutes of the middle stretch feel surplus to requirements. That is a recurring weakness worth naming in films we otherwise recommend so warmly. Start with the motel, provided a wandering plot does not put you off.
Biography
Sean Baker (born 26 February 1971) is an American filmmaker. He studied film at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and began his career making independent features.
He is known for directing, writing, editing and producing films including Take Out (2004), Starlet (2012), Tangerine (2015), The Florida Project (2017), Red Rocket (2021) and Anora (2024). He also co-created the television series Greg the Bunny (2002–2006).
Anora won the Palme d’Or at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival and four Academy Awards in 2025: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best Film Editing. Baker is married to producer Samantha Quan.
