Oscars 2023: Daniels duo win Best Directing Award for ‘Everything Everywhere’

Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert win the Oscar for Best Director for “Everything Everywhere All at Once” during the Oscars show at the 95th Academy Awards in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, U.S., March 12, 2023.
| Photo Credit: Carlos Barria

The directing duo of Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert took the elite filmmaking prize – their second Oscar of the night – for their multiversal dramedy Everything Everywhere All at Once, topping a talented field that included Hollywood royalty, Steven Spielberg.

“There is greatness in every single person,” Kwan said from the stage. “It doesn’t matter who we are. There is genius in every single person, you just have to find it. Thank you to the people who unlocked my genius.”

But Kwan assured his young son he would not foist similar expectations on him. “This is not normal, this is kind of crazy,” he said. “I will love you no matter what.”

The Daniels came into the night the favorites for the Oscar, and their film, the top nominee with 11, had immense awards season momentum, making the victory no surprise.

Scheinert dedicated the award to “all the mommies in the world,” and to his own parents. “Thank you for not squashing my creativity when I was making really disturbing horror films or really perverted comedy films or dressing in drag as a kid, which is a threat to nobody,” he said.

The duo earlier won best original screenplay, one of seven statuettes their film won, including best picture, best actress for Michelle Yeoh, best supporting actor for Ke Huy Quan and best supporting actress for Jamie Lee Curtis.

When they won for screenplay, Scheinert railed off the names of his favorite school teachers, saying, “you guys all inspired me and taught me to be less of a butthead.”

And Kwan said, “my impostor syndrome is at an all-time high.” He called Scheinert “my confidence. He is the person who told me I was a storyteller before I believed it.”

Each 35 years old, the Daniels were the youngest and least experienced filmmakers in a group of directing nominees that also included 76-year-old Spielberg ( The Fabelmans), 48-year-old Ruben Östlund ( Triangle of Sadness) 59-year-old Todd Field ( Tár) and 52-year-old Martin McDonagh ( The Banshees of Inisherin).

Their win comes almost exactly a year after the film’s release. The Daniels’ only previous feature was the oddball dead-body comedy, Swiss Army Man. At the time it might have seemed a pipedream that such a pair would win an award that has eluded star directors from Alfred Hitchcock to Ridley Scott to Quentin Tarantino.

But Everything Everywhere, which mixed the same kind of strangeness with elements of Hollywood sci-fi and action epics, stirred buzz – and inspired memes – from the start and became a magnet for awards in recent months.

Kwan becomes the third winner of Asian descent to win a directing Oscar. Chloe Zhao and Bong Joon also won the prize. The film was a boon for Asian actors, who were cast in most of the major roles, including Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu and Ke Huy Quan, all of whom got Oscar nominations, with Quan and Yeoh winning and Hsu losing to castmate Curtis.

Last month the Daniels won the Directors Guild of America Award, which has proven to be a strong predictor of Oscar victory.

Scheinert, from Birmingham, Alabama, and Kwan, from Westborough, Massachusetts, met while studying film at Emerson College in Boston. They began their career making music videos before moving on to features, occasionally directing episodes of television.