The 98th Academy Awards will be held Sunday, March 15, but one film, “Sinners,” has already made history, scoring 16 nominations, the most ever. Two former UC students pivotal to the film’s success will not only be on the red carpet — they’ll be likely to cross the stage.
One, UC San Diego alumnus Sev Ohanian, is a producer on the film, having founded Promixity Media with director Ryan Coogler and his wife, Zinzi Coogler. The other, Autumn Durald Arkapaw, has been nominated for cinematography, only the fourth woman in history to earn that distinction, and would be the first ever to win. She got her start with a UCLA Extension course in cinematography, purchased for her by a friend, that changed her life.
Read on to learn more about the extraordinary contributions of this duo to one of 2025’s most acclaimed films, plus a discussion by UCLA ethnomusicologist Cheryl Keyes on the importance of the Delta blues in the work.
‘Sinners’ makes Academy Award history, led by UC San Diego alumnus
A tattered paperback, dog-eared with notes scribbled throughout the margins, sits on the desk of Hollywood film producer and UC San Diego alumnus Sev Ohanian ’08. Years earlier, Ohanian flipped through the same book, “How to Make It in Hollywood,” during office hours with faculty in the Visual Arts Department whose rigorous (and sometimes mind-bending) approach to storytelling helped shape his creative instincts.
That foundation carried Ohanian from student filmmaker to a producer of acclaimed films, including “Fruitvale Station,” “Judas and the Black Messiah,” and now “Sinners” which has been recognized with a record-breaking 16 nominations from the Academy Awards — more than any other film in Academy history.
Today, he’s executive producer on the reboot of the 1990s hit television show, “The X-Files.” From the office of his multi-media company, Proximity Media, located on the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California, Ohanian reflects on his own origin story, rooted at UC San Diego, his long-standing creative partnership with acclaimed director Ryan Coogler, and what’s next for this Triton who is intent on disrupting the expectations of today’s Hollywood audiences.
A well-worn book shared by faculty in the Visual Arts Department.
Q: What do you do? Tell me about your work as a producer.
I’m a creative producer. Think of us kind of like the director’s right hand. Producers are involved in just about every decision that goes into making a movie, both creative and otherwise. We weigh in on the screenplay, the scope and scale of the movie, and give notes on what we think is working, while prioritizing character, theme, plot and story. A lot of what we do is supporting the filmmaker's or the director’s vision. Sometimes, it’s challenging that vision because ultimately, our boss is the movie itself. Our boss is also the audience that will one day (hopefully) watch our film and we want to do the best work for them.
Q: Why do you do it?
It’s an extremely challenging job, but I really love it. Honestly, I think I was born to do it. Growing up, I was the guy who wanted to take the lead on class projects and put on plays in high school. The collaborative nature of filmmaking genuinely brings me so much joy.
Q: How does your UC San Diego experience influence your work?
My work challenges mainstream notions of storytelling and filmmaking. UC San Diego and the Visual Arts Department were part of my foundational education in filmmaking. My professors, including Wolfgang Hastert and Michael Trigilio, and the coursework completely challenged the standard three-act storytelling. For example, I had a class where our professors told us to make a three-minute short film using only one pixel on the screen at any moment! I thought, “is this a riddle?” But it forced me to think creatively and outside the box.
Additionally, the focus of my Sixth College curriculum — Culture, Art and Technology — is where we did a lot of thinking, meditating and research on how culture, art and technology are all at odds with one another, and oftentimes, one and the same in today's society. That foundation gave me a real edge later at USC film school, which is an excellent school, but of course leans more traditional and focused on the Hollywood studio system.
Q: How do you select your projects?
Our production company is called Proximity Media. It’s a multimedia company that I founded with Ryan Coogler and his wife, Zinzi Coogler. We want to tell stories that bring audiences into close proximity to often overlooked subjects. On one hand, it’s just the right thing to do because of the very virtue of subjects that are often overlooked, and that means we should be paying attention to them. But it’s also a business-oriented decision for us. Audiences have seen everything. If we can make a movie that’s really specific, that’s about people or topics that are often overlooked, if it’s something you haven’t quite seen before, it’s a bit more unique. I think “Sinners” is a great example of that. It’s a horror film, it’s a vampire film, and there’s music, but under the surface it deals with some much deeper themes.
Q: How did you get involved in the movie “Sinners?”
I met Ryan at USC, introduced by mutual friends in our film school program. Right after graduating, I helped produce his first movie, “Fruitvale Station.” When we started our production company in 2018, we worked hard producing films directed by other filmmakers. But we always knew we wanted to produce one of Ryan’s original films. Years ago, Ryan had pitched Zinzi and me this idea for a movie set in the 1930s about a group of people putting together a juke joint party, and then a bunch of vampires show up. The movie would take place over one day and night as the group tries to contend with this threat.
My initial thought was, A: That sounds incredible, and B: It doesn’t sound like what I would’ve imagined a Ryan Coogler movie to be; it leaned a little grindhouse. But to no one’s surprise, mine included, once I read his draft it was undeniably a Ryan movie. “Sinners” is operatic, it’s emotional, it contends with themes of art and culture, and takes you on the highest of highs and the lowest of lows in a way that so many movies just don’t do.
Q: What behind-the-scenes stories would you like to share?
Every day on this movie was really challenging. We filmed entirely in Louisiana, which filled in for 1930s Mississippi. The natural elements were against us; we were shooting — quite literally — in the elements, in swamps, in the dirt, in the rain and there were 5 million mosquitoes, all of them biting us. One day, an alligator showed up, which was a new challenge for me as a producer. (Luckily, everyone was safe, including the alligator.)
Q: Music is such a standout character of the movie … can you tell us a bit more, including how the surreal music montage scene came about?
Ryan’s inspiration for the movie was his late great Uncle James — the oldest man he knew in his family — who often played blues music to him as a kid. After Uncle James passed away, Ryan found himself playing blues music to remember and honor his uncle. He thought about the power of music and how it connects you to your ancestors, whether they were musicians or what music is rooted in your culture. We invited blues musicians to help us compose, write and perform all the original songs in the movie. And Ryan came up with this brilliant idea: a surreal music montage, filmed as a continuous one-shot scene. Yet, that scene was our biggest question mark. It had to work. And candidly, when we were editing the movie, for many months, there were moments when the scene didn’t work. People would watch, raise their hands, and say they were confused.
They didn’t initially understand why an electric guitar player or a DJ was in our movie. A lesson I’ve learned, even at UC San Diego, is that if there’s a scene not working in your movie, usually the problem is not that scene; it’s something that occurred well before then. A solve for our surreal music montage was voiceover by actress Wunmi Mosaku (who plays Annie), opening the film with a beautiful folk-inspired animation: “There are legends of people born with the gift of making music so true … it could conjure spirits from the past and the future.” When we added that voiceover, it contextualized that midpoint sequence, and people were locked in.
Additionally, with “Sinners,” we were very intentional about giving people value in rewatching the film. There’s a lot of foreshadowing, a lot of clues, lots of tiny little things. We value our audience and packed every frame of the movie with meaning and intent. But my advice to viewers is to have fun, turn off your brains, and if you really want to, dig further into the lore, but there’s also plenty presented right in front of you, so enjoy it.
Q: What does the success of ‘Sinners’ mean to you? What about the record-breaking 16 Academy Award nominations?
I haven’t had a chance to process it yet. It’s only been a few weeks, but I can assure you that at no point in the year-plus that we worked on “Sinners,” did anyone ever talk about awards. And I mean that sincerely. Maybe it was because we were making an elevated horror film, and those films are often, statistically, not honored with these kinds of awards. I think that the fact that audiences appreciate the movie, that critics recognize the film, and that these incredible awards committees have honored the movie in the way they have, just gives me optimism that we can make more movies like this. Especially original movies like “Sinners,” rooted in culture and often overlooked subjects. To me, that’s the prize. That in and of itself is the award.
Q: And finally, what are your plans for the Academy Awards?
I’ve never attended the Oscars with one of my own films, so it will be exciting to go this year as a true nominee. In a lot of ways, it’s a dream come true. My Armenian parents immigrated to this country from Iran when I was very young. And the fact that we’ll be together on the Oscars red carpet genuinely feels like a real indicator that the American dream can come true.
‘Sinners’: A Q&A on the blues at the crossroads of music, culture and history
In director Ryan Coogler’s genre-bending film “Sinners,” a Delta juke joint becomes the stage for a story where music, history and horror collide. Set in 1932 Clarksdale, Mississippi, the film follows twin brothers Smoke and Stack, recently returned from some shady years in Chicago, and their young cousin Sammie, an aspiring blues guitarist whose music carries a mysterious power. As the story unfolds, a celebration of blues culture turns into a supernatural battle when vampires descend on the brothers’ juke joint, drawn by the irresistible force of Sammie’s music.
Cheryl Keyes
But beneath the film’s thrills lies a deeper story about the origins and meaning of the blues. Coogler has described the music as central to the film, using the Delta setting to explore how the blues emerged from the harsh realities of Black life in the Jim Crow South. In “Sinners,” the blues functions as an expression of both pain and of joy — born of the experiences of exploited Black cotton pickers and sharecroppers while also flourishing in the lively atmosphere of juke joints, where communities gathered to sing, dance and endure.
To unpack the film’s rich musical and cultural layers, UCLA Newsroom spoke with Cheryl Keyes, a professor of ethnomusicology, chair of the UCLA Department of African American Studies and a leading scholar of African American music. Keyes, whose research and performance spans the blues, hip-hop, electronic music and musical traditions across the African diaspora, explains how “Sinners” draws on the history, spirituality and cultural power of the blues to tell a story that reaches far beyond the screen.
In the conversation linked here, Keyes explores how the film portrays the roots of the blues, the tension between gospel and secular music, the spiritual dimensions of Black musical traditions and the enduring resilience of Black culture in the face of forces that seek to consume it. Note: The conversation does contain spoilers.
The 98th annual Academy Awards will be announced on Sunday, March 15. “Sinners” is available on HBO Max and other streaming platforms.
