Everything Everywhere All At Once was the biggest winner at the recent 95th Academy Awards winning seven Oscar statuettes for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Editing out of the eleven nominations that it had received.
Many don't know the fact that a Mumbai-born editor named Aashish D’Mello was one of the two assistant editors who worked on the Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert-directed film. India's Aashish D'Mello and China's Zekun Mao assisted the American editor Paul Rogers, who ended up winning the Best Editing award.
Who is Aashish D'Mello?
The 30-year-old Aashish was born to Denzil D'Mello, a lawyer in the Bombay High Court, and Ruth D'Mello. His parents live near the iconic Mehboob Studios in Bandra. He did his bachelor's degree in mass media from St. Xaviers College in 2013 and then worked as an assistant director at Apocalypso Filmworks for two years where he worked on multiple commercials and even the 2014 Yash Raj Films-backed Mardaani led by Rani Mukerji.
For his post-graduate studies, Aashish moved to pursue editing at the American Film Institute (AFI) in Los Angeles. Since then, he has been working in the film and television industry there. Aashish has worked on several short films, which have been screened at multiple international film festivals across the globe.
How did Aashish get the chance to work on Everything Everywhere All At Once?
Aashish credits Zekun Mao for getting the opportunity to work in the multiple Oscar-winning film. Sharing the same in his personal essay published in Hindustan Times, he wrote, "I got the job on the movie Everything Everywhere All At Once through the other assistant editor on the movie - Zekun Mao. We had both attended AFI and worked on other projects together. The experience of being on this movie’s editing team was as crazy as it sounds."
Aashish D'Mello at the Oscars
"Because the film was nominated for Best Editing, we were able to attend the Oscars as Paul’s guests. It was a surreal night. As we made our way down the hallway into the Dolby Theater, I thought of how lucky I was", Aashish writes in his essay. He adds that seeing Paul win the Academy Award for Best Editing was the most memorable moment at the special night. "We knew we were working on something unique, but I don’t think anyone could’ve predicted how big a phenomenon the movie would turn out to be. It makes all the hard work worthwhile", Aashish concludes.
READ | Oscars 2023 full list of winners: Everything Everywhere All At Once wins big; RRR, The Elephant Whisperers also triumph
