The Academy has been handing out the Best Cinematography Oscar since 1929. For 97 years, a woman had never won it.
Sunday night, that changed.
Autumn Durald Arkapaw won Best Cinematography at the 98th Academy Awards for her work on Ryan Coogler'sSinners, becoming not only the first woman to win the award in its 97-year history, but the first woman of color. Arkapaw, 46, is of Filipino descent on her mother's side and African American Creole on her father's side, with family roots in Masantol, Pampanga in the Philippines and the American South.
Her acceptance speech stopped the room. Arkapaw asked every woman in the Dolby Theatre to stand up, telling them: "I feel like I don't get here without you guys."
The win is made even more extraordinary by how rare the path to it has been. In the entire history of the Best Cinematography category, only three women had ever been nominated before tonight, 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 earning her degree from the AFI Conservatory's cinematography program in 2009.
Her credits include Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and The Last Showgirl, but it was her work on Sinners — shot on 65mm film using a combination of IMAX 15-perf and Ultra Panavision 70 cameras, making her the first female DP to shoot on large-format IMAX film — that made history.
Sinners came into tonight's ceremony with a record 16 nominations, the most of any film in Oscar history. Arkapaw's win is among the most significant of the night.
The 98th Academy Awards are airing live Sunday, March 15, at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT on ABC and Hulu.
Related: Oscars 2026: Full List of Winners (UPDATING LIVE)
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