The night after Everything Everywhere All At Once took home an astounding seven Oscars, including the Academy Award for best picture, Tilda Swinton offered praise of her own for the film.
“It’s a new world,” Swinton said of the wins, during a conversation at the SXSW conference with Eugene Hernandez, the new director of the Sundance Film Festival. “I feel that we’ve all spent a long time saying the Oscars don’t matter,” she continued, adding that it is heartening to see an original film like Everything Everywhere, often overlooked during award season, receiving recognition.
Still, Swinton did say she had qualms with the concept of awarding anything for being the best, noting, “I think the whole ‘best’ thing doesn’t really serve anybody.” Swinton, herself, is an Oscar winner, nabbing the statue for her supporting role in 2007 drama Michael Clayton.
Everything Everywhere premiered at the SXSW film festival a year prior in 2022. (“Congratulations, South by, really, for picking a good one,” said Swinton.) On Sunday night, the movie made history with honors for actors Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan — both of whom star in SXSW title American Born Chinese — as well as trophies for writer-director Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan.
Swinton is premiering her latest film, A24’s Problemista, at the festival. The film is the feature directorial debut for SNL alum Julio Torres, in which he stars as an aspiring toy designer in New York City with an expiring work visa who takes a job with an art-world outcast (played by Swinton) in order to stay in the country.
“The script got to her and she was already familiar with my work,” Torres told THR prior to the festival. “The thing about working with her is that she’s so giving. It’s a testament to her that she never felt intimidating.” Produced by Oscar winner Emma Stone and fellow SNL alum Dave McCary, Torres told THR that the movie draws inspiration from what he calls the “Kafkaesque” bureaucracy of the U.S. immigration system.
Swinton offered during her keynote conversation, “It’s still beyond thrill for me to have anything to do with Julio. It’s such a thrill to call him a comrade.”
