The Daniels duo win the Oscar for best direction

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The directing duo known as The Daniels doubled down, winning the Best Director Oscar for one of the most unlikely successes in Oscar history.

Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert snagged the elite film award for their multiverse story “Everything Everywhere All at Once” on Sunday night, beating out a group of fellow filmmakers including Steven Spielberg.

The Daniels, as the directors are known, came out on top to win the Oscars on Sunday, and their film, the night’s most nominated with 11 nominations, received a huge boost this awards season, so the win doesn’t was no surprise.

It was the second Oscar of the night for the duo, who had already won Best Original Screenplay, one of seven categories their film won on Sunday night, including Best Picture, Best Actress for Michelle Yeoh, The best supporting cast actor for Ke Huy Quan. , and Best Supporting Actress for Jamie Lee Curtis.

When they won their first Oscar of the night, Scheinert mentioned the names of his favorite teachers, saying, “You inspired me and taught me to be less of a jerk.”

And Kwan noted that “my impostor syndrome is at an all-time high.” Kwan said Scheinert was his “confidant.” He was the person who told me he was a storyteller before I believed him.”

Aged 35 each, the Daniels were the youngest and least experienced filmmakers in a group of nominees that also included Spielberg, 76, nominated for ‘The Fabelmans’, Ruben Östlund, 48, nominated for ‘Triangle of Sadness”, Todd Field, 59, nominated for “Tár”, and Martin McDonagh, 52, for “The Banshees of Inisherin”. island spirits”).

His triumph comes almost exactly one year after the film’s release. The Daniels’ only previous feature is the bizarre corpse comedy “Swiss Army Man.” At the time, it might have seemed like an impossible dream for such a couple to win an award that eluded directors like Alfred Hitchcock, Ridley Scott or Quentin Tarantino.

But “Everything Everywhere,” which mixes elements of sci-fi and Hollywood action movies, has caused a stir and inspired memes since its release, becoming a magnet in recent months.

Kwan is the third Asian filmmaker to win the Best Director Oscar. Chloe Zhao and Bong Joon Ho have already won the award. The film also galvanized Asian actors, who played most of the lead roles, including Yeoh, Quan and Stephanie Hsu, all of whom earned Oscar nominations.

The Daniels are the third directing duo to win an Oscar. Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise won for the original “West Side Story” in 1962, and brothers Joel and Ethan Coen won for “No Country for Old Men.” (weak”) in 2008.

They are also one of the youngest to win the award. The director of “La La Land” (“The city of stars. La La Land”), Damien Chazelle, was the youngest when he won the Oscar in 2017 at the age of 32.

Last month, the duo scooped the Directors Guild of America award, which proved to be a strong indicator of winning the Oscars.

Spielberg was set to sweep awards season with his autobiography “The Fabelmans,” but the recent surge in popularity of “Everything Everywhere All at Once” proved too much.

Scheinert, from Birmingham, Alabama, and Kwan, from Westborough, Massachusetts, met while studying film at Emerson College in Boston.

They started their career by directing music videos, then they moved on to fiction and sometimes to directing episodes of television series.

After two years of back-to-back women’s victories in the category, the Academy reverted to its historic standard of nominating men and in the 95th edition, no women competed in the category.