Daniel Scheinert, a Birmingham native, and his red-hot film “Everything Everywhere All at Once” nearly just swept the Critics Choice Awards, and the Oscars could be next.

The film won in the following categories: Best picture, director, screenplay, supporting actor (Ke Huy Quan) and editing.

Along with his professional partner, Daniel Kwan (forming the filmmaking duo “the Daniels”), Scheinert won awards for best director and best screenplay for the hit movie.

Scheinert and Kwan were up against some powerhouse names in the film world, such as Steven Spielberg ((“The Fabelmans”), Baz Luhrmann (”Elvis”) and James Cameron (“Avatar: The Way of Water”). See the full list of winners.

READ: One of the Daniels on his Alabama roots, fitting his state into ‘Everything Everywhere’

“Everything Everywhere All at Once,” one of the best-reviewed movies of the year, now on a collision course with the Oscars, potentially landing nominations for best picture, director, screenplay and more. A modern science fiction epic dubbed “an assault on the senses,” his film promotes kindness amidst a generation gap spurred by technology, and he got spanked by the legendary Michelle Yeoh in the process. The film also earned $103 million at the global box office, making it the highest grosser in distributor A24′s history.

The film has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 95%. The consensus says, “Led by an outstanding Michelle Yeoh, ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ lives up to its title with an expertly calibrated assault on the senses.” The film follows an aging Chinese immigrant swept up in an insane adventure, where she alone can save the world by exploring other universes connecting with the lives she could have led.

READ: Alabama Entertainers of the Year 2022

The film marks a deeply personal work for the Daniels, particularly as it relates to their own parents and the generation gap widened by the age of the internet. And yes, Scheinert even worked a little Alabama into the multiverse.

Born in Birmingham, Scheinert attended Oak Mountain Elementary and Middle Schools before going to high school at the International Baccalaureate School at Shades Valley. His parents, Ken and Becky, now live in Guntersville. His dad said Scheinert got into filmmaking through local competitions and musical theater during high school.

“I think I’m lucky that my parents encouraged creative endeavors,” Scheinert told AL.com. “My mom grew up in Guntersville, but she and all her sisters were super into music and the arts. My mom went to Auburn for art before getting a business degree and working for BellSouth. So they encouraged me and my brother to do Odyssey of the Mind and Destination Imagination as a kid, which were creativity competitions that we did. And I got really into theater.

“But the film bug, it was 20 percent just me doing what my brother did, because he and his friends were all making movies for fun, and they had a public access TV show that they only made like two episodes of, but I loved it. And Sidewalk Film Festival just blew my mind when I made a movie in high school with my best friends and it played for an audience and they liked it. I was like, ‘This is incredible.’ So we just started trying to make movies and do all the Sidewalk Scrambles and enter all the competitions. I interned at Sidewalk Film Festival for a while, and it became my favorite thing to do my last three years of high school.”

Scheinert said Sidewalk Film Festival is “still my favorite film festival,” so he attends anytime he can. “I always tell other filmmakers that it’s the right size of a film festival where you can walk to all the theaters, and it’s just one fun weekend. A lot of film festivals are like two weeks, and it’s all spread out.”

Scheinert made his solo directing debut in 2019 with “The Death of Dick Long,” shot in and around the greater Birmingham area. He’s returned to his hometown for screenings and filmmaker chats at Sidewalk, which has featured “Swiss Army Man” and “Dick Long” on its lineups.

Watch the trailer below: