History was made at the 98th Academy Awards when Autumn Durald Arkapaw won Best Cinematography for her work on Sinners, becoming the first woman ever to win the award in its 97-year history. She also becomes the first woman of color to take home the prize, marking a landmark moment for the film industry.
The category has existed since 1929, and until Sunday night, no woman had ever won it. Arkapaw’s emotional acceptance speech became one of the defining moments of the evening. Standing on stage at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, she asked every woman in the room to stand, telling them, “I feel like I don’t get here without you guys.”
The rarity of the achievement highlights just how difficult the path to this moment has been. In the entire history of the category, only three women had ever been nominated before: Rachel Morrison for Mudbound in 2018, Ari Wegner for The Power of the Dog in 2021, and Mandy Walker for Elvis in 2022. All three lost. Arkapaw didn’t.
Born in Oxnard, California and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Arkapaw studied art history at Loyola Marymount University before graduating from the cinematography program at the AFI Conservatory in 2009. She is of Filipino descent on her mother’s side and African American Creole on her father’s, with family roots in Masantol, Pampanga in the Philippines and the American South.
Her filmography already includes major titles such as Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and The Last Showgirl. But it was her groundbreaking work on Sinners, directed by Ryan Coogler, that pushed her into Oscar history. The film was shot on 65mm film using a combination of IMAX 15-perf and Ultra Panavision 70 cameras, making Arkapaw the first female cinematographer to shoot on large-format IMAX film.
Sinners entered the night with 16 nominations, the most of any film in Oscar history, and Arkapaw’s victory stands as one of the ceremony’s most significant milestones.
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