Director Sean Baker doesn’t know he’s the front-runner with ‘Anora’

Sean Baker, photographed in the projection booth at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica. “It was extremely weird to hear them call out ‘Anora.’” From left, moderator Jim Hemphill, writer-director Sean Baker, co-producer Samantha Quan and co-producer Alex Coco, speaking after Tuesday’s Aero screening of “Anora.” “I thought we were going to blank the whole weekend,” producer Coco says. “I thought, ‘OK, I don’t think I’m going to get any more higher-brow than ‘The Florida Project,’” Baker says. “There was not one moment when we were making ‘Anora’ that I was like, ‘I’m doing this for a mainstream audience,’” Baker says. He didn’t know Carpenter would be there and Quan says her husband was “freaking out.” “I’m never fully informing myself, so I didn’t know he was getting the career honor that night,” Baker says.