Anora (film)

Anora is a 2024 American comedy-drama film written, directed and edited by Sean Baker. It stars Mikey Madison in the title role of an exotic dancer and follows her beleaguered romance with the son of a Russian oligarch. It also stars Mark Eydelshteyn, Yura Borisov, Karren Karagulian, Vache Tovmasyan, and Aleksei Serebryakov.

The film premiered on May 21, 2024, in competition at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Palme d'Or, the first American film to do so since 2011's The Tree of Life. It is scheduled to be released on October 18, 2024, by Neon.

Premise
Ani is a young Uzbek-American   stripper from Brighton Beach, a Russophone enclave in New York City. As she is somewhat conversant in Russian, her boss fixes her up with Russian-speaking clients. After meeting Vanya, the son of a Russian oligarch, a romance kindles that, in addition to his desire to avoid deportation, leads to their elopement. Their fairytale marriage is threatened when Vanya's parents travel to New York intending to force an annulment.

Production
Principal photography took place at the beginning of 2023 in Brooklyn, New York.

For Anora, Baker has stated that his intentions were towards "telling human stories, by telling stories that are hopefully universal [...] It's helping remove the stigma that's been applied to [sex work], that's always been applied to this livelihood."

At a press conference in Cannes, Mikey Madison stated that Baker and producer Samantha Quan, who is Baker's wife, would act out different sex positions to demonstrate what they wanted the actors to do. Madison was offered an intimacy coordinator but said, "As I'd already created a really comfortable relationship with both of them for about a year, I felt that that would be where I was most comfortable with and it ended up working so perfectly."

Release
Worldwide distribution rights were acquired by FilmNation Entertainment in October 2023. The film was then sold by FilmNation to Le Pacte for France, Lev for Israel, Kismet for Australia and New Zealand, and Focus Features/Universal Pictures International for the rest of the world excluding North America in deals similar to those made on Baker's previous film, Red Rocket. In November 2023, Neon acquired North American distribution rights to the film and is scheduled to release it on October 18, 2024.

Anora premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 21, 2024, and won the festival's Palme d'Or on May 25. It earned a 10-minute standing ovation at the end of its screening. It became the fifth consecutive Palme d'Or winner distributed by Neon in the United States; previous winners include Parasite, which would go on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, Titane, Triangle of Sadness, nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture and Anatomy of a Fall, also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. It is also the first American film to win the Palme d'Or since 2011's The Tree of Life.

Critical response
Greta Gerwig, serving as the president of the 77th Cannes Film Festival Jury, commented that "[Anora] was something we collectively felt we were transported by, we were moved by [...] It felt both new and in conversation with older forms of cinema. There was something about it that reminded us of [the] classic structures of [Ernst] Lubitsch or Howard Hawks, and then it did something completely truthful and unexpected."

Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair wrote, "[Anora is] a wild, profane blast [...] Even when Baker's storytelling and dialogue gets repetitive, Madison keeps things lively [...] I found myself torn between finding Baker's conclusions compassionate and sensing a vague whiff of something patronizing. [...] Baker's explorations of outsiders tend to tread between graciousness and gawking, benevolent anthropology and the more malevolent, missionary kind."