Stylistically thrilling, hugely entertaining and emotionally genuine, Anora is a singular variation on a Cinderella story that could only come from writer-director Sean Baker. Set in 2018, it follows the wild odyssey of its titular protagonist, a young Russian American sex worker who is swept out of her everyday life as an erotic dancer by the impetuous, free-spending son of a Russian oligarch.
REVIEW: Anora draws from real-life experiences and societal themes to add depth and authenticity to their narratives. By incorporating elements from real-world scenarios, filmmakers can create stories that resonate on a deeper emotional and intellectual level, making their work relatable and thought-provoking. It’s always fascinating to see how creative minds interpret and present the complexities of human life and societal issues through the medium of film. It challenges societal norms and perceptions, making viewers reflect on their own biases and understanding of these issues. It’s a thought-provoking film that doesn’t shy away from difficult topics, and it does so with a sense of empathy and realism. The story is a reflection on how genuine relationships can emerge from brokenness and the struggle for self-worth in a society that often devalues certain professions. It won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes in 2024.
The origins of Anora lie in Baker’s career-long collaboration with actor Karren Karagulian, who has worked with the filmmaker since his debut feature, Four Letter Words (2000). He knew that Karagulian is married to a Russian-American woman from Brooklyn, which gave him a starting point for Anora. “I’ve wanted to find a vehicle for Karren Karagulian for a while now,” Baker affirms. “I knew I wanted to do a story about Russian-speaking populations in the Brighton Beach/Coney Island area, being that Karren has ties to the community. Eventually, I came up with this story and it developed approximately over a year.”
The centerpiece of the film would be a home invasion overseen by Karagulian’s character, Toros, who is acting on orders from his boss, a powerful Russian oligarch. The operation goes spectacularly, chaotically off the rails for Toros and his two back-up men. Says Baker, “I knew that I wanted to show the home invasion taking place in real time in the middle of the film, so the screenplay was structured around that. It was all about how we got there and how it resolved.”
That was where Ani – short for Anora – came in. Baker conceived the character as a Russian-American dancer and sex worker from Brighton Beach who impulsively marries the oligarch’s son, Ivan. The clock starts ticking on the newlyweds when Ivan’s parents in Russia get wind of the union and decide to come fetch their errant child. Meanwhile, Toros has dispatched his friend and associate Garnick and a Russian named Igor to stand guard on the couple. That plan backfires when Ivan escapes and Ani proves to be a ferocious combatant who is defiant in the face of a threatened annulment. With Ivan’s parents en route, Ani is forced to join Toros, Garnick and Igor in an all-night hunt for her fugitive husband, all the while fighting to hang on to her new life.
Casting Anora
Before Baker has a script, he typically casts his lead roles.
Mikey Madison, best known for playing Pamela Adlon’s eldest daughter in “Better Things”, first caught Baker’s eye in Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019). “Although Mikey’s screen time in Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood was brief, she made such a big impact,” Baker comments. The development process began to gain speed in January 2022, when Baker and Samantha Quan, his producing partner and wife, went to see the horror reboot Scream V which cemented the decision that Mikey was perfect to play “Ani”. Baker continues, “Seeing her playing different roles, her ability to change her emotions on a dime, her sense of humor, her ability to make brave choices, and her amazing SCREAM. It was at that point that we reached out to her. After meeting with Mikey, finding out she was a budding cinephile with similar tastes and her expressing interest in my idea, the character was then written with her in mind.”
Madison was thrilled by the outreach – and surprised. “I was floored that Sean wanted to meet me, but I wasn’t about to question it,” she recalls. “I’m a big fan of his work. Sean asked my opinion and if I’d be interested in making the film. I immediately said yes. I felt like the luckiest actress in the world that he wanted to work with me.”
With Baker at the helm, she had no hesitation about taking on the role of a sex worker. Sex work has figured in half of Baker’s films, the iPhone-shot Tangerine (2015) is about a pair of Los Angeles trans sex workers out to avenge a cheating boyfriend, in The Florida Project (2017) a single mother turns to sex work to support herself and her daughter in an Orlando motel, and Red Rocket (2021) comically captures a washed-up porn star.
For Madison, what stands out in those films – and in Baker’s work as a whole – is a clear-eyed, nonjudgmental, non-condescending, non-exploitative gaze. Says Madison, “Sean has dedicated his career to destigmatizing sex work and telling stories about marginalized people. And he’s always done it in a very honest way – and in a funny way, too. He deals with a lot of dark subject matter, but he’s constantly flipping that on its head and injecting it with humor. So I trusted Sean completely and knew he would be a true collaborator with me.”
Ani isn’t necessarily looking for a prince to come to rescue her from her job at a Manhattan gentlemen’s club; she certainly isn’t expecting him to arrive in the form of a coltish Russian who has asked for a Russian-speaking dancer. She takes the assignment reluctantly, putting on her game face as she’s introduced to Ivan Zakharov, played by Mark Eydelshteyn. “There’s a little trepidation on Ani’s part,” Madison says. “She’s been told that Ivan has money, which is unusual for a young person coming into a club. A lot of dancers and sex workers told me that young men are not big spenders and are generally trying to get the most out of their buck. But Ivan turns out to be this refreshing character. He’s not threatening at all; he’s fun and he’s funny and also around Ani’s age. And Mark plays his character so sincerely at first that she’s just charmed by him.”
Eydelshteyn put himself in Ivan’s blithely confident, throwaway mindset. “For Ivan, life is very easy because he is rich. If he wants it he can have it. So I thought like that and I did the tape totally naked in bed,” the actor recalls. “I smoked vapes and wore a Russian hat. I tried to mix English and Russian, mostly I talked in Russian. I did some rap. And then I sent it to Sean. It didn’t seem possible that he would choose me, but I was very happy when he said he wanted me in the movie.”
Eydelshteyn’s take on Ivan was not only convincing, it shaped how the film took shape. As Baker explains, “Once we met Mark and saw his tape, there was NEVER any other choice for Ivan. He is incredibly funny, sensitive, energetic and intellectually facile. The character of Ivan was fleshed out more than originally intended after Mark got involved in the project because I wanted to see more of Mark on screen.”
Ivan has been living in the United States for about six months, ostensibly so he can study. But he mostly spends his time partying with his friends, playing video games and enjoying all the perks his parents’ vast wealth can buy. Eydelshteyn sees his character as somewhat adrift, even if Ivan doesn’t fully realize it. “Ivan is living a very fast life in Brighton Beach, drinking, smoking, doing drugs. But there’s nothing interesting in this kind of life after three months. I think he’s tired of it but he hasn’t found anything to pick him up. Nothing has really focused him, until Ani. When he meets her, life becomes brighter. I think he wants to be with Ani from the very beginning but he can’t be honest with himself and he’s scared of responsibility. So he asks her to be his honey-girlfriend for a week. It’s a strange form of love.”
While writing the script, the two stayed in regular connection, talking through and gradually forming the central character with the help of consultant Andrea Werhun, author of the memoir “Modern Whore.” Baker, whose work apartment includes a kitchen stocked with Blu-rays in the cabinets, also gave Madison a handful of movies, including Federico Fellini’s “Nights of Cabiria.”
Meanwhile, Baker looked at things like “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three” for shooting New York at night. Later, he shot on the same stretch of Brooklyn road beneath the elevated subway immortalized by the chase scene in “The French Connection.” He and his production designer, Stephen Phelps, decided to put a hint of red in every shot, a nod to films like Jean-Luc Godard’s “Contempt.” In the credits, Baker thanks the director Jesús Franco for the red scarf and colors of “Vampyros Lesbos.”
“Even though my films are taking place pretty much now, they’re contemporary stories, I want it to feel like it’s shot in 1974,” Baker says.
During production, Baker would sometimes lean into guerrilla filmmaking techniques, sending Madison into a pool hall or restaurant to interact with those inside. (“The scene could go in any direction because it’s not really a scene,” says Madison.) For the sex scenes, Baker and Quan would themselves model the movements for Madison and Eydelshteyn.
“He was really dedicated to creating a safe space for us to be able to do those scenes and feel comfortable,” Madison says. “He wanted us to see what the positions would look like, so they would show us — obviously fully clothed and everything. It was funny and kind of broke the tension a little bit. Sean’s a one-of-a-kind director.”
Crafting the look of the film
By the time Baker finished the screenplay, he had a film sense of how he wanted Anora to look and feel. Among the key decisions: he wanted to shoot the film in 35mm using anamorphic lenses. “Primarily I was influenced by cinema of the 70’s,” he explains. “Not only the New Hollywood films but also from the Italian, Spanish and Japanese films of the era – in both style and sensibility. This mash-up is what I found inspirational—a formal and controlled aesthetic with choreographed camera moves caught with anamorphic wide-screen images, a deliberate color scheme and unobtrusive but stylish lighting. Essentially I wanted to give a polished presentation to a story that hasn’t really gotten one in American cinema since the 70’s.”
To help him achieve that goal, he re-teamed with his Red Rocket director of photography, Drew Daniels. Daniels had shot Red Rocket on 16mm film and was excited to join Baker on a fresh creative adventure. “This project felt right up my alley from the beginning,” he comments. “I was hooked in by the story and the setting and the fact that Sean wanted to shoot on 35mm with anamorphic lenses. I feel like it’s a rite of passage as a filmmaker to make a New York City film, and that’s what this was for me. It was a dream come true.”
He goes on to describe the overall strategy they developed: “Sean and I were going for a cold, gray version of a New York winter contrasted by the saturated reds and flashy colors of the club and Vegas. We were not very dogmatic about our approach and we tried to stay open to what was happening in front of us, so being able to adapt and follow the feeling of the scene was important. That said, we tried to be very deliberate about our compositions and camera movements and we tried to avoid handheld unless the scene called for it. We generally aimed for an objective point of view and realism but we also let the camera have fun and tried to bring a sense of humor to the film. The film eventually does take a turn towards the subjective so I don’t think you can pin this movie down and describe it easily as one thing. As the story and feeling changes, our approach and the language changes also.”
The cinema of the 1970s was a touchstone for practical choices and specific references. Says Daniels, “In general, I tried to approach the film the way an independent filmmaker would have in the 1970s. I kept the tools very simple. The camerawork was grounded; we pushed the film, flashed it, pulled it, underexposed it, used Russian 70s anamorphic prime lenses and zooms. We shot out in the streets with the actual light of New York City and Brooklyn, and I particularly tried to channel the way Owen Roizman shot The Taking of Pelham 123 and The French Connection. From Italian cinema I tried to borrow the use of zooms and from films like Jean Luc Godard’s Contempt, we were inspired by the use of color and composition.”
Locations and production design underscore the themes of class and access that are subtly woven into the film. Everything about Ivan’s lifestyle is worlds away from how Ani lives and works. On her first private engagement with Ivan, a town car is sent to pick her up at the typical Brighton Beach duplex she shares with her sister. Gliding past ordinary homes on a residential street near the water, she arrives at a huge concrete-and-glass structure with a security booth just past its gated entrance. It’s Ani’s introduction to a level of privilege she could scarcely have imagined before meeting Ivan. And there’s more to come. When Ivan decides on a whim to take Ani and his friends to Las Vegas, they travel by private plane and make themselves at home in their hotel’s most expensive penthouse – the guest who occupied it having been relocated. In contrast, the search for Ivan that unfolds in the second half of the film is carried out in the accessible-to-all spaces of Brooklyn and Manhattan; that is, the places Ani already knows.
When production designer Stephen Phelps first met with Baker, they discussed a color palette that was primarily white, black and gray, with pops of red punctuating the interiors. Often Phelps had to work with existing decor, as in the case of the club location on the far west side of Midtown Manhattan. While the club’s two levels of public spaces had defined, visually interesting aesthetic styles, other areas were quite spare, with little to attract the eye. “There were a lot of dead spaces, so I brought in red tinsel to liven up those areas. For the panning shot that opens the film, I put the red tinsel across that section of the club. When Drew did the shot on the dolly, the mirrors in the room and lights reflected all that red.”
In outfitting the location that served as the Zakharov mansion, Phelps focused on a handful of rooms where the action would take place. He used some of the large on-site furnishings, like the sprawling camel-colored sectional in the open plan living space near the entrance. Then he brought in key pieces – tables, artwork, lamps – which would tell a story about the home’s owners, who want to telegraph their wealth and status with furnishings they consider tasteful and stylish. “I wanted there to be a cold kind of feeling to the interiors – big empty spaces and a lot of space between people,” he remarks. “It feels more like a showplace than a home. There’s a lot of glass and neutral colors. That kind of expensive, austere style worked with the outside of the building, which is almost Brutalist in its architecture.”
The Las Vegas getaway portion of the film was shot at The Palms Hotel and Casino. The production was able to film multiple scenes within the one building. The kitted-out, glass-filled penthouse did give Phelps a moment’s pause, however. As he explains “I was a little nervous about it because it looked kind of like the inside of the mansion. But that actually made sense and it was funny – they go all the way across the country to then hang out in a very similar-looking space.”
The Shoot
Anora began production in January 2023 and shot for 37 days in New York City and 3 days in Las Vegas. The logistics of the shoot were challenging – there were many different locations, a multilingual story and characters, an ambitious schedule and the vagaries of winter weather. Nonetheless, everyone involved describes it as an extraordinary experience. Says Madison, “Every single person – every actor, every crew member as well as Sean – poured their heart and soul into making this movie. It was amazing to be around that kind of energy.”
Karagulian has known Baker for nearly 30 years, having met him when he was a student at NYU. Reflecting on their long collaboration, he says, “Every time Sean finishes a film, I tell him it’s his best one yet. During the years we’ve worked together, I’ve seen how he matures from film to film. For one of our first projects, Prince of Broadway, he was behind the camera, directing, editing, and producing everything. Then came Tangerine, with his genius use of the iPhone to shoot that project for pennies. Sean is a filmmaker from head to toe – he breathes it, he lives for it. He has become one of the true masters of this craft.”
Adds Tovmaysan, “With every step, you could feel the film getting better and better, and that was because of Sean’s passion. I also enjoyed how he mixed three different cultures (American, Russian, and Armenian) in this film and worked with actors from totally different backgrounds. It’s very challenging to work with actors from such diverse backgrounds, but Sean was able to get the best out of everyone. He created a synergy among the actors that was very beneficial for the film.”
Baker was grateful for the unwavering commitment and creativity of the cast. Says Baker, “This cast was primarily comprised of seasoned, professional actors. They gifted me on a daily basis with nuance, ideas and inspiration. It was a joy to work with all of them.”
The actors also found joy in working together, onscreen and off. Madison and her co-stars Eydelshten and Borisov spent many hours together, getting to know one another, talking about their characters and establishing the rapport that would fuel their scenes. Madison is effusive in her praise for the two actors. “Mark and Yura are incredibly dedicated, talented actors and just very kind people,” she comments. “It was important for Mark and me to build this trust together in order to shoot some of the things we did. When I first met Mark, we were not able to communicate very well because of the language barrier. But we were still laughing together because I think we already had that kind of chemistry. Mark’s a very adventurous actor, very clever and quick. He has a way with physical comedy that reminds me of Charlie Chaplin. He’d come up with fantastic, crazy ideas, like doing the backward somersault onto the bed in the first sex scene. There’s a lot of real laughter in the movie – and that’s all Mark, because of the bond that we built and how far he was willing to go to make me laugh.”
“Mikey!,” Eydelshteyn exclaims when asked about working with Madison. “Mikey is a brilliant partner, a brilliant actress, a brilliant girl. She’s one of the best people I’ve ever worked with, and very professional. At a certain point I realized that Mikey and I are kind of the same. I mean, we are from different cultures and speak different languages, but we have the same sense of humor. She’s joking and I can understand her, and it’s very funny. And she can understand my stupid jokes and she’s laughing. I remember the first time she laughed at one of my jokes, I was so happy.”
Madison’s onscreen interactions with Borisov naturally had a different tenor. Ani spends much of the film either physically fighting with Igor or slinging profanity and insults at him. Igor doesn’t lose his temper and in Borisov’s hands, the character was both funny and soulful. Comments Madison, “I would turn to Yura in a scene and the emotion in his eyes would almost shock me. He brought so many interesting personality traits to Igor, and was always surprising me. As an actor, Yura has an interesting relationship with time. He never sacrifices the integrity of the character during a scene, even if the camera is running out of film. He takes his time, which adds so much to the character because Igor ponders. And he has this dry sense of humor, which he brings to the character. ”
Borisov was equally impressed by his co-star. “Mikey is very powerful as an actress, as a woman, as a human. I could look over at her and see she was ready for anything. She gives very deeply of everything she has to the scene, to the film. She was like a sister to me during the making of the film. I have so much respect for her.”
Ten of the film’s 37 shooting days were spent filming the pivotal home invasion/fight sequence, approximately 25 minutes of nonstop action that plays out in real time. It was an enormous undertaking, with any number of shifting variables to be accommodated in the pursuit of seamlessness. As Daniels explains, “I had to make it look like everything was happening in continuity. This was made harder by the fact that we were very daylight dependent, our house had windows and huge mirrors in every direction, and we were shooting in the winter with only about 8 hours of shootable light at best. We had to be very clever about shooting order, looking towards windows or away from them; making daylight from scratch when the light faded; and finding scrappy low budget ways to control the daylight as much as we could – because of course during the 10 days we had every weather imaginable and it had to look like 25 continuous minutes. It was very stressful but we pulled it off and I’m really proud of the sequence.”
Improvisation is an important part of Baker’s approach to filmmaking. Sometimes improvisation is a matter of going off-script and making up dialogue. It can also entail building out a scene from a brief description of a character’s actions. Explains Madison, “The way that Sean writes, there might be a paragraph that says, ‘Ani’s at the club and she walks up to customers.’ And I would then bring that to life. I’ve never experienced anything like that – a 10-minute-long scene where I’m just going from customer to customer and talking to them in character, and they’re recording me. It’s a completely live set and feels absolutely real. That’s just how Sean Baker does it. That’s how he’s able to create these incredible moments of reality.”
Those kinds of interactions also happened out in the world, in Las Vegas, Brooklyn, and Manhattan. While filming the extended search for Ivan, Madison, Borisov, Karagulian and Tovmaysan shot scenes in the venerable Brighton Beach restaurant Tatiana’s, a pool hall and video arcade, among other locations. “Those docu-style scenes were exhilarating to do,” says Madison. “To bring a camera into a restaurant or a street full of unsuspecting people and shoot a scene in character is something I will never forget.”
Of course, the search for Ivan eventually ends and Ani’s soon-to-be ex-husband is brought to heel by his implacable parents. Baker’s films often have ambiguous conclusions, ending with scenes that are startling in their beauty and emotional heft. That is certainly true of Anora, and its final moments that find Ani sitting in a car with her erstwhile captor, Igor, who has driven her back to her Brighton Beach home.
Recalls Madison, “In the script there was a paragraph describing that scene. It changed a bit; the story evolved as we were shooting because of what everyone was bringing to the film. It’s such an important scene and Yura and I really wanted to do it justice. What I love about it is that each audience member will be able to decide what they think.”
SEAN BAKER, Director, Writer, Producer, Editor
Sean Baker is an award-winning writer, director, producer and editor who has made eight independent feature films over the course of the past two decades. Baker, the son of a patent attorney, grew up in New Jersey outside New York City. He attended film school at NYU. When he began, he envisioned himself making “Die Hard.” But as his exposure to arthouse and international film expanded, so did his interests as a filmmaker. Still, his Richard Linklater-influenced first feature, 2000’s “Four Letter Words,” drew heavily from his suburban upbringing.
Baker, a resolutely independent filmmaker, is less comfortable at center stage than he is behind the camera. His movies, likewise, relish the communities of seldom-chronicled American subcultures. Samantha Quan, a producer of “Anora” and Baker’s wife, says he has always been interested in “people and situations that are always there but people choose not to see them.” He is an unconventional path for a filmmaker. He has no interest in television or franchise movies, remaining devoted to the big screen. He makes scrappy indie movies built from real-life experience and research that balance both screwball comedy and social realism.
His most recent film Red Rocket (2021) premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival and was distributed by A24 in the U.S. and by Focus Features internationally. His previous film The Florida Project (2017) premiered in the Director’s Fortnight section at the Cannes Film Festival to widespread critical acclaim. Among the many accolades the film received — including an Oscar nomination for Willem Dafoe for Best Supporting Actor — Sean was named Best Director by the New York Film Critics Circle. Sean’s previous film Tangerine (2015) premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and won an Independent Spirit and two Gotham Awards. Starlet (2012) was the winner of the Robert Altman Independent Spirit Award and his previous two features, Take Out (2004) and Prince of Broadway (2008), were both nominated for the John Cassavetes Independent Spirit Award.
