American director Sean Baker has been in the field for decades after receiving his B.A. in film studies from New York University. When he was six, his mother took him to the library to watch movies on a projector. There, he watched the James Whale version of Frankenstein for the first time and knew he wanted to be a director. While his interest in film may have stemmed from the Gothic horror of an adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Baker’s scope of interest lies somewhere between theatrics and ethnography. His work is fictional, but its subjects and topics are rooted in very real people living in similar circumstances.
He made his debut with Four Letter Words, which he wrote, directed, and edited. However, it was not until he made his fifth feature film, Tangerine, that Baker began to be noticed for his filmmaking skills on a broader scale. His next feature movies after Tangerine — The Florida Project and Red Rocket — were able to get the attention they received because he had built a dedicated, stellar career over several decades. That being said, he currently has seven feature films to his name, many of which he served as producer, editor, writer, and director. These are the best Sean Baker movies ranked.
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5 Starlet
Music Box Films
Starlet was released in 2012 and tackles the tale of an unlikely friendship. Jane (Dree Hemingway) is twenty-one and an aspiring actress working in pornography. She is simply trying to make ends meet when she meets an elderly woman (Besedka Johnson) at a yard sale and buys a thermos from her. When Jane opens the thermos up, she discovers that $10,000 is tucked inside it, which is a life-changing sum for someone struggling. She then decides to befriend the woman who sold it to her, thus making this movie into a slice-of-life film about two completely different women. While they are so different, they come together remarkably. Starlet is not a groundbreaking film in how it tells its story, but instead offers sweetness, a tale about love, devotion, and life.
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4 Red Rocket
A24
Red Rocket is Sean Baker’s newest movie, and it truly packs a punch. The movie’s concept was initially born when Baker began working on his 2012 film Starlet, and, in 2020, Simon Rex was finally cast in the leading role of Red Rocket. Rex portrays Mikey “Saber” Davies, a porn star retracing his steps by returning home to Texas City. His estranged wife is less than happy to see that he is back, especially as he shows up to the house she lives in with her mother and begs for a place to stay. She caves in and he makes himself comfortable. His past as a porn star does not let him move forward with finding a new career at the dollar store or a local diner, and it is up to him to rebuild a life in Texas. And perhaps that new future of his includes a relationship with an underage girl.
3 Take Out
CAVU Pictures
Take Out’s subject is a complicated one: illegal immigration. Ming Ding (Charles Jang) is a hardworking immigrant in New York City, and he currently works at a Chinese takeout shop in the heart of the city. Then, there is the catch: he came to the United States illegally and now has to pay off the debts he owes to the men who smuggled him into the country. The debt he amassed for this is huge, something that one ordinary man cannot pay, especially if he is working in the food service industry. When the smugglers show up and say that he needs to pay off his debt completely by the end of the day, Ming has to find a way to stretch his income to make enough money to get him out of the red. Takeout juxtaposes the lifestyles of various New Yorkers to the life that Ming has to live to survive, creating stark comparisons about the economic and social realities of being an illegal Chinese immigrant.
2 Tangerine
Dulles's Brothers Productions
Tangerine is the movie that put Sean Baker on the map of filmmakers to watch out for. Tangerine’s protagonist is Sin-Dee Rella (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez in her debut role), a transgender sex worker that has just gotten out of a brief stint in prison. After discovering that her boyfriend cheated on her for a cisgender woman, Sin-Dee rages and decides to hunt down the woman herself. The heart and soul of the movie are the authentic performances of Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor, transgender actresses who were able to perform roles about transgender women. Both were pushed as bids for Oscar nominations, although neither was unfortunately nominated.
1 The Florida Project
Outside the walls of Disney World, in Orlando, Florida, there lies a dirty secret about the town: poverty runs rampant. Inside the gritty motels found off highways and major roads, families live from every paycheck to barely survive and make it through the day. These families are the subject of The Florida Project. A six-year-old girl (Brooklynn Prince) lives with her unemployed mother (Bria Vinaite) inside a motel room, and their struggle to pay the fees for the room leads her mother to prostitution. At the same time, the girl is still a child and views the world through an innocent lens, even if she is taking upon the demeanor of her mother — something that may hinder her in the world when she grows up. Willem Dafoe portrays the motel owner that tries to help the girl and her mother, even when he thinks they are a lost cause.
