The Festival That Shaped This Year’s Award Season Winners
The LA Film Festival was a serious feeder for talent for both independent cinema and Hollywood. The festival highlighted exciting talent and gave that talent access and audience with the larger LA film world. Coffee dates were made, next projects were pitched, and a community was fostered.
A few notable names that you might have heard of this award season screened their earlier work at the fest, including Sean Baker (Anora), Justin Simien (Hollywood Black), Ali Abbasi (The Apprentice), and Jon M Chu (Wicked).
These four filmmakers took full advantage of everything the festival had to offer and are now able to make those daring projects that have earned them all that hardware. If we look at the films that they brought to the festival, we might learn a little something about what makes these filmmakers tick, and how themes they explored way back when are still relevant to the directors today.
Sean Baker – Prince of Broadway (2008)
Yes, we’ll take our flowers.
Sean Baker has had a hell of a 2025. The Anora creator not only won the Best Feature and Director prizes at this year’s Film Independent Spirit Awards, but also swept the Oscars, with Anora winning the top prize and, in a feat that might have make the Coen Brothers jealous, and just left the rest of us gob smacked by the sheer talent Baker won Writing, Directing and Editing Oscars for himself.
Now he’s the Prince of Hollywood, but back in 2008, he was an up-and-coming indie director who brought The Prince of Broadway to the LA Film Festival. The fatherhood coming of age story won the Best Narrative Feature award that year and Baker went on to be a Film Independent Fast Track Fellow in 2011, before Tangerine took him to the stratosphere in 2015. It’s great to see your prince grow up right before your eyes.
Ali Abbasi – Border (2018)
Ali Abbasi doesn’t shy away from thorny subjects. Why else would he take on making the origin story of one of the worlds most derisive men in The Apprentice. The Donald Trump biopic staring Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong tries to understand the current Oval Office holder, if not sympathize with him. Abassi was nominated for the Best Director Spirit Award and the Palm d’Or for his effort.
But back in 2018, he came to the LA Film Festival with his second feature, the genre love-story Border. Based on the John Ajvide Lindqvist story, the film follows Tina, a social outcast who also happens to be a troll in a world of humans. The film is deeply humanistic, romantic, political, weird, and just about everything you want from a midnight feature. The festival agreed and awarded Abbasi the World Fiction Award.
Justin Simien – Dear White People (2014)
In Justin Simien’s case, it pays to make people uncomfortable. In Hollywood Black, Simien turns his lens on film history and finds the stories of Black artists have still been left out. For his effort, he received the Independent Spirit Award for Best New Non-Scripted or Documentary Series.
Of course, the director is no stranger to bringing up awkward truths. When his Dear White People premiered at the 2014 LA Film Fest, the film “evoked a mix of raucous laughter and uncomfortable silences,” according to Variety. Making ‘em laugh and making ‘em think turned out to be a potent combo.
John M Chu – The LXD (2015)
While he’s well known now for films like Crazy Rich Asians and In the Heights, Jon M Chu started out with a love of dance. From his films at USC to his first feature, Step Up 2: The Streets, movement has always compelled Chu. It’s evident when you see the Wicked director’s 2010 web series The LXD (The League of Extraordinary Dancers). At the 2015 festival, Chu, a Project Involve alum, held a screening of the series followed by a dance party.
He was so inspired by the talented dancers that he worked with on Step Up 2, that he didn’t want the beat to stop. His exuberance for movement, spectacle and epic drama shines through in this fun, light superhero series. Watching it with a 2025 Tik-Tok-algorithmic lens makes you miss the heady days of 2000s B-Boys- just doing it for the love of the game.
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