Canadian ‘Anora’ producer Samantha Quan, Vancouver ‘Dune’ VFX supervisors among Oscar winners

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows a scene from "Dune: Part Two." (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

Vancouver-born producer Samantha Quan celebrated the “incredible, impossible” journey of “Anora” while accepting the best picture Oscar on a night when the film reigned supreme.

The sex worker dramedy by U.S. director Sean Baker beat out nine other films including the papal thriller “Conclave” and box-office smash “Wicked.”

“We made this film with very little money but all of our hearts,” Quan said in her speech at Sunday night’s ceremony in Los Angeles.

“To all of the dreamers and the young filmmakers out there: tell the stories you want to tell. Tell the stories that move you. I promise you, you will never regret it.”

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Quan and Baker won best picture alongside Alex Coco.

“Anora,” which had a $6-million budget, led all films with five wins, including for best original screenplay, directing, editing and star Mikey Madison’s lead actress upset over Demi Moore.

The film stars Madison as Brooklyn stripper Anora who finds her life upended when she crosses paths with Mark Eydelshteyn’s Vanya, the reckless son of a Russian billionaire, and marries him in a whirlwind romance.

Quan recently told The Canadian Press that she and Baker have collected “so many beautiful and heartbreaking” stories from sex workers over the years, and that one of their goals was to “destigmatize” that community.

“I don’t know how this can be real life. This is really an incredible, impossible journey for the past 10 months,” Quan said before thanking her family.

While several Canadians nominated in creative and technical categories went away empty-handed, two Vancouver visual effects producers won for bringing to screen the surreal worlds of “Dune: Part Two.”

Stephen James and Rhys Salcombe accepted the best visual effects award for their work on the film, alongside England’s Paul Lambert and Germany’s Gerd Nefzer.

James and Salcombe work for Vancouver-based DNEG and were visual effects supervisors on the film.

“Dune: Part Two” sees Quebec director Denis Villeneuve continue his adaptation of Frank Herbert’s acclaimed science fiction novel.

The sequel, which features mind-bending visuals of giant sandworms and otherworldly desert landscapes, follows Timothee Chalamet as Paul Atreides as he seeks revenge against those who destroyed his family.

It was nominated for five awards including best picture. It also won for best sound.

Host Conan O’Brien joked during his opening monologue that Villeneuve banned the use of smartphones on set “because his actors kept Googling, ‘What is this movie about?”’

O’Brien then summoned a massive “Dune” sandworm to play “chopsticks” on a grand piano, while a pirouetting Deadpool twirled across the stage.

In the best documentary category, Canadians Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie were in the running for their film “Sugarcane,” which investigates abuses at a B.C. residential school. But they lost to “No Other Land,” an Israeli-Palestinian collaboration that follows Palestinian activists fighting to protect their West Bank communities from demolition by the Israeli military.

While Academy voters spread the love this year, handing out acting awards to “The Brutalist” lead Adrien Brody, Emilia Perez"‘s supporting actress Zoe Saldana and “A Real Pain” supporting actor Kieran Culkin, “Anora” was the big winner of the night.

Baker, who wrote, produced, directed and edited the film, swept all four categories -- a tie with Walt Disney for the most individual wins in a single year in Academy Awards history.

The unlikely Oscars front-runner is being heralded by observers as a big win for indie filmmakers, a year after the $100-million studio epic “Oppenheimer” dominated the show with seven awards.

Quan recently told The Canadian Press that the emergence of “Anora” in the Oscars race felt “wonderful and discombobulating,” especially given its modest budget.

Baker and Quan, who are married, have been collaborating on films since 2017’s “The Florida Project.”

“It can get a little overwhelming because what’s happening now is even bigger than the dreams I ever imagined,” she said in an interview last week.

Quan added that she and Baker hoped “Anora” would bring more visibility to the sex work community. They consulted with several people from the industry to make sure the film represented them accurately.

“Sex work is work,” she said.

“There’s so much stigma and judgment over it, and the question is why? The most important thing should be how to keep people (in that community) safe.”

By Alex Nino Gheciu

With files from The Associated Press

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 2, 2025.