Spoilers ahead. MANILA, Philippines – When Sean Baker copped this year’s Palme d’Or, the top prize at Cannes Film Festival, for his latest independent title Anora , he closed his speech by devoting the win to “all sex workers, past, present, and future.” It was only natural for the director to do so, considering the narrative focus of his past four films: sex work.
Must Read Cannes entry ‘Anora’ aims to destigmatize sex work, says director Starlet (2012) involves characters, including the lead, who are adult film stars. In Tangerine (2015), Baker takes a stab at painting the storied subcultures of Los Angeles by tracking the inner lives of transgender sex workers of color inhabiting the city. In The Florida Project (2017), a single mother is forced to peddle her body to provide for her daughter and continue living in a day-rate motel.
Then enters Red Rocket (2021), about a cunning ex-porn star returning to his Texas hometown, where he finds a renewed yet warped sense of self. In Anora , now screening at QCinema International Film Festival, Baker moves to New York to untangle the story of the titular character (Mikey Madison, in a meteoric rise), who lives in Brighton Beach, in real life a known Russian-expat community south of Brooklyn, but works at a Manhattan strip club – a story spiked with fisticuffs, madcap humor, and tons of steamy encounters. Ani, as she prefers to go by, glows like the waves of glitter she affixes to her hair, does not back away from c.