Sinners is officially a record-breaking film. Ryan Coogler’s supernatural thriller received 16 Oscar nominations on Thursday, breaking the record for most-nominated film in the award ceremony’s history.
The film, set in 1930s Mississippi and starring Michael B. Jordan as the Smokestack Twins, beat out All About Eve, Titanic, and La La Land, which were tied with 14 nominations each. Jordan was nominated for Best Actor, while Coogler was nominated for Best Director, and the film was tapped for Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Song (“I Lied to You”), and more.
The incredible Wunmi Mosaku, who played the witchy Annie, finally achieved recognition for her role, receiving a nod for Best Supporting Actress after getting snubbed at the Golden Globes (the film still received seven Globe nominations, and took home two, for Cinematic and Box Office Achievement and Best Original Score, by Ludwig Göransson). Delroy Lindo, who played Delta Slim, was also nominated for Best Supporting Actor.
Coogler, recently named one of Rolling Stone‘s Voices of the Year, spoke to Rolling Stone about his film, a beautiful combination of vampires, the blues, and the Black experience. “Blues is the entry point to the movie for me, but if blues was the entry point, hip-hop was the car that I was driving in,” he said. “For every music that I come across in my life experience, hip-hop is what I know as being mine. It’s my native language. And so for me to really feel like I could make this movie, I had to truly understand that blues was hip-hop’s ancestor.”
“Music ain’t the only thing that echoes,” he added. “Everything echoes. When people are systematically exploited, that exploitation echoes. You’re more likely to get swindled in a place where a lot of people exist who have been swindled. People know what it feels like to be on the other side of a deal.”
Michaela Coel in ‘The Christophers.’Claudette Barius/NEON
