Ryan Coogler's "Sinners" has won the top prize at the ACE Eddie Awards, the film editing guild's annual honors—and if history is any guide, that puts it firmly in the Oscar conversation.
The Eddie Awards have predicted the Academy Award for Best Film Editing with remarkable accuracy over the past two decades. Since 2000, the Eddie winner has gone on to claim the Oscar 18 out of 26 times. That's a better track record than most political polling.
"Sinners" is Coogler's follow-up to Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and early word suggests it's his most ambitious film yet—a genre-bending supernatural thriller that reportedly required innovative editing techniques to maintain its dreamlike atmosphere while keeping the narrative coherent.
According to Variety, the film's editor employed cross-cutting between multiple timelines and seamlessly blended practical effects with digital augmentation—the kind of technical wizardry that Eddie voters love.
What makes editing the secret weapon of cinema is that when it's done well, you don't notice it. You just feel it. The rhythm, the pacing, the way a scene breathes—that's all in the cut. Walter Murch once said that editing is the only art unique to cinema, and he's right. Everything else—acting, photography, music—existed before film. Editing is purely cinematic.
"Sinners" doesn't have a wide release yet, but this Eddie win will certainly help with awards season positioning. In Hollywood, nobody knows anything—except me, occasionally. And I know this: if you want to predict the Oscars, watch the Eddies.
The ceremony also honored "One Battle After Another" in the documentary category, recognizing the grueling task of shaping hundreds of hours of footage into a coherent narrative.
Congratulations to all the winners. Editors are the unsung heroes of cinema, and it's nice to see them get their moment in the spotlight—even if they'd probably prefer to stay in the cutting room.
