Screen/Society--"Anora" (Sean Baker, 2024)

ANORA
(Sean Baker, 2024, 139 min, USA, English, DCP)

In a thrilling, star-making performance, Mikey Madison plays Ani, a tough-as-nails exotic dancer from Brighton Beach suddenly thrust into the lap of luxury when she's whisked away on a whirlwind romance with Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), an obscenely wealthy young customer at her strip club. However, Ivan turns out to be the spoiled scion of Russian oligarchs, and Ani's wild ride is anything but your average rags-to-riches story. Baker always takes a good-natured, sociological approach to his subject matter and milieu, and here he has created an authentic 21st-century screwball comedy that tackles sex, love, class, and money with matter-of-fact directness.

-- Winner of the Palme d'Or at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival

"...a pure shot of frenetic pleasure, a New York odyssey that is the most immersive and accomplished comic adventure yet from American original Sean Baker." - Film at Lincoln Center

"In focusing on a broad swath of sex workers and their hardscrabble realities [...] Baker has made the case, in movie after movie, that there is no tougher, more resourceful, and more cruelly stigmatized labor force under the sun." - Justin Chang, The New Yorker