A day after Anora swept several major categories at the Oscars, an anonymous social media post threatened to throw cold water on its uplifting narrative of the low-budget indie that could.
On Crew Stories, a popular below-the-line social media hub, one unnamed critic alleged that the $6 million production — and its auteur director, Sean Baker — avoided the major crew union IATSE for part of its 2023 shoot, keeping costs low by “screwing over [Baker’s] crew” and depriving them of working hours they could use to be eligible for union co-administered health benefits. Once the labor group attempted to unionize the production — which it eventually accomplished and tweeted about on March 16 of that year — the production fought it “tooth and nail” while Baker had a “hissy fit” and wasn’t friendly to the crew after, the post alleged.
Though anonymous Internet mudslinging about acclaimed films is nothing new, the description was widely circulated within the industry. As the days passed, several Anora crew members — including the film’s prop master, a grip and a best boy grip — defended the production in the post’s comments as questions reverberated about what the set looked like. So what really happened? The Hollywood Reporter reached out to dozens of people on the production. Only a few would discuss — though those that did depicted a fairly typical flip, or when a non-union production goes union mid-shoot, of a New York indie.
For whatever reason, IATSE got to Anora late. The union stepped in a few days before the film eventually wrapped up its nearly two-month-long New York production schedule and moved on to Nevada, even though Sean Baker is a marquee name in indie film, having received awards attention for 2015’s Tangerine, 2017’s The Florida Project and 2021’s Red Rocket. (Of those titles, only The Florida Project was produced under an IATSE contract.) It’s not clear who reported the production, alerting the tri-state area IATSE Local 52 that a non-union film eligible for its Low Budget Theatrical Agreement — with the capacity to potentially pay union health and pension benefits — was actively shooting. The film’s producers did not comment for this story.
Though it may come as a surprise to some, Hollywood sets don’t always flip due to poor working conditions, though certainly that can be one reason. All it can take for IATSE to potentially attempt a flip is a report, and someone might call a project in for any number of other reasons, such as a worker wanting to receive union-standard wages or apply their working hours toward the total required to be eligible for the union co-administered health plan, for example. Crew members can also get their first union cards by being part of a crew that flips, thereby having access to the union’s benefits plans, contracts and representatives if they have an issue. (Still, anyone, not just crew members or union members, can report a non-union production to IATSE.)
Two Anora crew members say there wasn’t an overall push from a large group of colleagues to unionize this set before the process was in motion; instead, says the first, the flip came as a surprise to “99.9 percent of us,” says one. Before the flip, wages were considered to be at or around the union scale and the working conditions fairly standard for a non-union indie shot in New York, according to those who spoke to THR. (The other crew member’s only criticism? The catering wasn’t good, “but we were shooting in Brighton Beach, so we were running out to get great Russian food, and it was fucking awesome.”)
Writes a third crew member of working conditions on set, “Nothing about it was out of the ordinary from my perspective beyond a few days of overtime.”
Anora’s online defenders have particularly emphasized that the film’s wages were equitable. “I got paid fairly, and was never lied to about the budget,” wrote prop master Kendra Eaves on Instagram. Best boy grip Gabriel Armstrong and grip Rachel Parrella said that the production paid “scale” wages, or comparable to union rates, with Parella adding, “[Baker] paid us the right wage from the start.”
Whatever the motivation was for the report, after being alerted to the Anora situation, Local 52 circulated a unionization vote to the crew and the overwhelming majority supported flipping the project. IATSE representatives showed up to set as the production was shooting a scene at a private airfield in Amityville, on Long Island. After the reps arrived, a brief strike began and filming ground to a halt as bargaining took place.
While negotiations happened behind closed doors, the crew members who spoke to THR remember Baker being fairly gracious about the whole thing. There was a huddle where Baker expressed his appreciation for the group — “He explained how happy he was for us and excited and he was almost crying, not sobbing, but certainly beyond misty,” says the first crew member, who didn’t recall a “hissy fit.” A contract was reached on March 15.
On a practical level, the flip meant that the production would now be supporting the union’s benefit plans and, for the non-union crew, it could help smooth their way into Local 52.
All that being said, as a matter of course it’s not unusual for cash-strapped indie projects to try to avoid working with IATSE, at least at first — even if the effort might be futile. According to several independent producers consulted for this story, many projects that start out non-union will budget for a flip, with a bucket of money set aside if and when it does happen. It’s not unheard of that a film with a budget of around $6 million would try to proceed initially without the union.
Anora, of course, had contracts with SAG-AFTRA and the Directors Guild of America; why not also have an IATSE deal from the start? According to these indie producers, union minimums and requirements can be antithetical to how certain indie filmmakers work, with minimums and maximums set for work days, set lunch breaks and task designations, not to mention penalties that can be accrued for productions already on tight budgets. Some filmmakers try to at least attempt a non-union production, in other words, for the perceived creative leeway it offers and to keep costs down.
Says one producer who works in the independent space, “These protections are formulated for the reality of a $100 million movie where the majority of the crew doesn’t interface with the director.” And in a cost-cutting industry environment where financing challenges abound and the box office is troubled, indie budgets are tighter than ever.
Baker himself has talked about the difficulties he found in working with a large crew that was less familiar with his occasionally spontaneous, idiosyncratic production style on The Florida Project. “When you are working with a group of people that don’t know your directing style and they’re use to a very specific way of making films – a union crew, local crews – yeah, that was a problem,” Baker told Indiewire in 2017. “It was something that almost caused this film to shut down half way through because people thought I was rogue and crazy.”
He cited a moment in the film when two characters are selling perfume to tourists, a scene he wanted to capture in the vein of Candid Camera, having the actors approach real people who could subsequently sign a release to have their reactions appear in the film. “Do you know how much more difficult that is to do when there’s 40 people around you and you just want everyone to go away?” Baker told the publication. “Come on guys, do we need the head of transportation here?”
But as Anora demonstrates, there can also be PR perils in the perception that an indie production has attempted to avoid a union, especially for someone like Baker, who has made several films about marginalized communities like sex workers (Tangerine, Anora) and people in poverty (The Florida Project). After the 2021 #IASolidarity movement and the Rust tragedy focused attention on the working conditions for crew members, general viewers and industry workers are more sensitive than ever to stories about what it was like to work on set. During the 2025 awards season, Baker surfaced the importance of supporting indie film and movie theaters — and likely wants attention drawn to those issues, and not to the working conditions on his set.
Now a best director, best film editing, best original screenplay and best picture Oscar winner, Baker is likely to face more scrutiny than ever moving forward. He’s said he wants his next project to “double down on our indie guerrilla filmmaking style.” Will that involve opting, early on, for an IATSE contract or risking another union flip? Only time will tell.
Mia Galuppo contributed to this report.
