The comedy from independent director Sean Baker tells the story of Anora, a Brooklyn sex worker who lives a Cinderella story when she impulsively meets and marries the son of an oligarch. When the news reaches Russia, their fairy tale is threatened
She went against all odds, and in the end she won Palme d’Or from the 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival (THE SPECIAL). At the awards ceremony on Saturday 25 May, the comedy Anora Of Sean Baker was awarded as Best film by the jury chaired by Greta Gerwig. The film by the American director, screenwriter, editor and film producer active in independent cinema thus triumphed among the 22 films in competition, taking the scepter away from the great favourite, The seed of the sacred fig of the Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof, and to the only Italian, Parthenope by Paolo Sorrentino. Anora will be released in Italy in theaters with Universal.
THE PLOT
Anora, a young sex worker from Brooklyn, has the chance to live a Cinderella story when she meets Yvan, a young slim client who divides his time between music, coke and alcohol. Nothing would suggest that he is an ultra-billionaire, at least until the young escort enters his three-story house with swimming pool and gym. At the beginning their relationship is based solely on the exchange of sex (Yvan offers Anora 15 thousand dollars for a week of company), but then the boy falls in love (or rather, gets angry) with the girl and the two get married in Las Vegas. When the news reaches Russia, Anora’s fairy tale is threatened. The girl discovers that Yvan is the spoiled son of an oligarch for whom the marriage, which affected the family’s interests, should not have happened. The film takes a comedic turn when a trio of mobsters arrive at the newlyweds’ home.
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THE CAST
The independent director Sean Baker has assigned the role of the protagonist Anora to the revelation actress Mikey Madison and the part of the spoiled Yvan to the actor Mark Eidelstein. The cast also features Yurij Borisov, Vačʻe Tʻovmasyan, Karren Karagulian, Aleksej Serebrjakov and Dar’ja Ekamasova.
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DIRECTOR
Introduced to the world of cinema by his mother and conquered by Boris Karloff’s interpretation of Frankenstein, Sean Baker has had one goal all his life: “To go to Cannes”. As he told the Guardian in 2017, from his first cinematic explorations “it was all cliché: super-8 film, video cameras, film clubs at school, torturing my sister to make her act in my films”. After studying cinema at New York University he made his first film, Four Letter Words, but then got lost in the excesses that led to heroin addiction. “I wasted a lot of time, I had some bad times,” she said. An admirer of John Cassavetes, Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, Baker first won over audiences with the film Tangerines, shot entirely on iPhone and released in 2015. The film, which attracted the attention of the Sundance and Deauville festivals, tells the story of two transgender prostitutes on a crazy day in Los Angeles. In 2017, The Florida Project with Willem Dafoe instead he has a little girl who lives in a squalid motel on the outskirts of Disney World and her mother who lives by her wits. Baker has often favored castings on the fringes of the star system, also carried out on Instagram or in the supermarket. For the porn star of RedRocket of 2021 has recruited an actor who was not at all destined to end up on the steps of Cannes, Simon Rex, who appeared above all in ScaryMovie and selected with a five-minute audition over the phone.
