Sean Baker has crashed the film awards party with exuberant, tone-shifting sex worker story Anora. He tells Screen how he shaped his Palme d’Or winner
Sean Baker is still on a high after ascending the Cannes mountain and winning the Palme d’Or with Anora this year. “I am still coming down from it,” he says. “I needed most of the summer to process it and just live in that moment. It’s still sinking in day by day. It’s been a great ride.”
Over the course of his career, Baker’s ride has been one that has often focused on stories about sex workers. Beginning with his fourth feature Starlet, starring Dree Hemingway as a woman who is gradually revealed to be entering the porn industry, and continuing with Tangerine, The Florida Project and Red Rocket, all of Baker’s recent run of films have focused on characters who practise the trade in one way or another. Anora sees the writer/director offer another perspective on the subject.
“I never want it to become a schtick,” says Baker. “Each film came about quite organically. Each one is breaking out of my comfort zone, because each one tackles a different aspect of sex work. I try to mix up the styles each time.”
Anora tells the story of stripper and occasional sex worker Ani (Mikey Madison) and her whirlwind romance with Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), the son of a Russian oligarch who she meets at the Manhattan strip club where she works. It soon descends into a crooked Cinderella story, as his parents find out about their marriage and seek to have it annulled.
While Anora’s first hour resembles a romantic comedy, a mid-movie pivot sends the story in a different direction. “I wanted to do a more plot-driven film that had the tropes of Hollywood studio films, and then quickly pull the rug out and bring us into a reality-based place,” explains Baker.
Anora could be likened to an indie band going mainstream, while still keeping the innate spirit of what makes them unique and what initially drew audiences to them. “This is the one that’s much bigger in scope,” agrees Baker. “And because of that, I leaned into a more audience-friendly approach.”
Talent search
Casting is key to Baker’s films, and he has taken casting director credit on two of them: Tangerine and Red Rocket. With Anora, Baker first took notice of Madison as a member of the Manson Family in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood. “She’s the one I had my eyes on for those final 15 minutes,” he says. “I was taken aback, because I didn’t know her from other things. I was like, ‘Who is this young actor? This is really some bold stuff.’ So I filed her away in the back of my head.”
Next, Baker caught Madison in 2022’s Scream, the fifth entry to the slasher franchise. “I was in the theatre, and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s the Manson girl from Once Upon A Time!’ And I started really studying her performance. She was again stealing the show, and her performance had depth. She was a young woman that had attitude and sass, and that’s exactly what I was looking for in Ani.”
Baker had initially considered casting a pop star as the spoilt boy who falls for Ani, before Russian actor Eydelshteyn was suggested. A memorable naked self-tape sealed the deal. “He’s looking out of a big window onto the streets of Moscow with a beanie and cigarette, and it’s just his little white butt to the camera,” recalls Baker. When the actor turns to face the camera, a zoom reframes him in the shot, sparing his modesty. “He finished the scene, and it was like, how can we not cast him?”
Principal photography took place at the beginning of 2023 in Brooklyn, New York over 37 days. Securing the film’s main location — the lavish mansion where Ivan lives, and which actually belongs to his absent parents — was key, and in this regard art imitated life. “It was designed and lived in by a Russian oligarch up until around Covid,” reveals Baker. “And then it was sold to a local Russian American who grew up in the neighbourhood and was proud of his house, and open to us shooting there.”
Baker found the location after searching “biggest and best mansion” on Google and discovering the house was on the market. He couldn’t believe his luck. “I was walking through this house going, ‘Oh my God, it has everything I need.’ I almost didn’t do that house justice. There were rooms in there that I wish I shot.” But with such a luxe location also comes stress: you break it, you buy it. “What if a stand was put down too hard and cracked one of those beautiful marble tiles? That’s $20,000. We were walking on eggshells. The whole crew wore [protective] socks because we didn’t want to cause any damage.”
Securing the house was one of many coups for Baker, who shares producing duties with his wife Samantha Quan, and also Alex Coco — who jumped from Baker’s assistant to producer after The Florida Project. Coco and Quan step up during filming to allow Baker to concentrate on his directing function. Quan also “understands acting and actors, and can help me cast”, while Coco “understands everything to do with post-production and delivery”.
With Anora, the film’s expansive tonal palette became a particular point of focus for Baker — as reflected in a crucial midpoint scene where a local fixer and two henchmen descend on Ivan’s residence and attempt to restrain Ani, which manages to be both funny and scary at once.
“I don’t know who said this, but they said something like, tragedy is in close-up and comedy is in a wide,” says Baker. “In a way, I think some of my films are like sociological experiments. When you pull back and you look at the absurdity of the situation — these three goons basically never expect this young woman to hold her own — that’s funny to see from a distance. You get closer in, and you have to realise this is an extremely scary, serious, threatening incident for Ani, so it’s nothing to be laughed at. The whole idea was to play with that balance of comedy and pathos.”
Anora was independently financed and then acquired by FilmNation Entertainment in October 2023, with Neon and Focus Features/Universal quickly coming in respectively for North America and most international rights. Global box office at press time of $24.1m is more than double Baker’s previous highest-grossing film, The Florida Project. Since Cannes, further validation has come with four Gotham nominations, including ones for Madison and co-star Yura Borisov — playing the henchman who brings an increasingly soulful flavour to the film’s second half.
Audience reactions have varied depending on geography and nationality. “It plays slightly differently in New York, because New Yorkers are laughing at themselves,” says Baker. “But then you show it overseas, and the laughter is just as big but it’s falling in different places. It’s also very different for Russian speakers and Armenian speakers. The people who can speak all three languages are the ones enjoying it the most.”
So what’s next? “I’m worried about the next one. There is pressure. If I do another sex worker movie, are people going to be like, ‘Enough is enough already’?”
Whatever the subject, is he anticipating an easier ride on the back of the Cannes Palme d’Or win? “Everyone is asking, ‘Is it opening doors for you?’ I’m like, ‘Well, no, it’s not about opening doors. It’s about allowing me to stay in the lane I’m in without resistance, I’m not sure what’s coming down the road. All I know is that I’m very happy where I am with this Palme d’Or, because I know it will make things easier.”
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