March 3, 2025 · Watch the official trailer
This year’s Academy Award winner for Best Picture wasn’t propelled by a major studio with an extravagantly large budget, which is somewhat surprising in a cinematic year anchored by the likes of “Dune: Part Two” and “Wicked: Part One.”
On an independent budget of $6 million, filmmaker Sean Baker crafted one of 2024’s most charming, hysterical, and captivating movies about a woman on the fringes of society, an unlikely protagonist with a rich, layered personality irresistible to watch.
Centered around a breakout star in newly crowned Best Actress winner Mikey Madison, “Anora” is the exceptionally unlikely tale of a 23-year-old Russian-American woman working in high end escort services whose romance with a client leads to “Great Gatsby” like series of events that shape and transform her life in emotional and hysterical ways.
As writer/director/editor/producer, Baker’s imprint is all over the film for which he also received Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Editing awards Sunday evening at the Oscars, making him the first in Academy history to win four Oscars individually for one movie.
Baker has made his career showcasing characters just outside polite society, most often in sex work with his Oscar nominated “The Florida Project” and the edgy “Tangerine” among his filmography. With “Anora,” however, this is Baker’s most crowd-pleasing and accessible movie to date, not just for the sometime dry, sometimes slapstick comedic hijinks at play but also in the very raw, human emotions that he’s able to draw out in his lead character Ani.
Best Actress winner Madison is enthralling and transformative as Ani, a scrappy, feisty exotic dancer in the Brighton Beach area of New York City. The ways Madison is able to subtly balance the failed innocence of her youth with a streetwise attitude more than befitting her five-foot-nothing frame allows the actress to slowly reveal Ani’s desire for authentic love and the American dream, making her turn one of 2024’s most compelling and impactful in a role where audiences might not see it coming.
From the outset, Madison goes above and beyond to portray sex work on a very respectful, non-judgmental way that feels visceral and authentic to the genuine experiences young women find themselves in and the hustler attitude Ani displays provides Baker with a pop of vibrancy early in the film to keep audience engagement while setting up the narrative.
Over the course of “Anora,” her walls begin to soften as Ani falls for her client, Ivan, in much the same way that Julia Roberts once fell for Richard Gere in 1990’s “Pretty Woman” and though “Anora” isn’t quite the traditional rom-com, Madison easily draws viewers to her side to where they can’t help but root for this fledgling romance to thrive.
For his part, Mark Eydelshteyn bounds around “Anora” as Ivan with an outstanding glee that is two parts reckless wild child and one part earnest miscreant that has just enough of a soft side to make Ani’s burgeoning adoration for his potential seem plausible to the story.
The frantic nature of much of Baker’s film keeps things from feeling too lethargic and allows for viewers to perhaps miss some of the more subtle character work in glances Madison’s Ani lobs at Ivan as she begins to see him in a different light. Her physicality demonstrably changes to perfect effect when Ani is on or off the clock in their relationship, providing a far more complete picture into her character than one might expect from similar films.
The film’s ensemble cast provides a wonderful context to the larger world of Brighton Beach in “Anora” with Best Supporting Actor nominee Yura Borisov as an Armenian heavy with a genuine, pure heart serving as an unlikely sense of morality in a largely amoral world and the gradual warmth of his Igor becomes one of the film’s biggest strengths by the final act.
The visual spectacle of “Anora” keys off a bright, wide-eyed lens that pulls viewers into Ani’s POV as she’s whisked away on a thrill ride of high roller spending with an ever-changing color palette that highlights the unique qualities of each location from the darker hues of the club to the practically glowing pristine sheen of Ivan’s home.
Its Best Picture win Sunday evening proves a continuing evolution in what the industry regards as a major Oscar contender, with independent and foreign films like “Anora,” “The Brutalist,” “Emilia Perez,” and “Flow” all defying the large studio formula. Baker rightfully used several moments in his speeches to call for more independent filmmaking and support for theatrical releases where cinema can be enjoyed as a communal movie-going experience.
Cinephiles who haven’t yet seen “Anora” likely won’t be able to catch the crowd-pleasing dramedy in theaters anymore but should absolutely seek out the newly-minted Best Picture winner streaming on demand or later this month when it arrives on Hulu.
Regardless, there’s such a brash vibrancy melding with subtle nuance in Baker’s dramedy that audiences should seek out “Anora” in a crowded screening theatrically to get the full effect of its uniquely funny yet emotional narrative.
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