Sean Baker, the acclaimed filmmaker behind Tangerine, The Florida Project, and Red Rocket, may have the Oscar frontrunner on his hands. Anora was the winner of the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the first American film to do so since Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life in 2011. Finally, NEON has revealed the first trailer for a film that we should expect to see a lot from in the coming months.
Anora continues Baker’s fascination with sex workers and bringing their stories to the world. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood‘s Mikey Madison stars as an Uzbek-American exotic dancer and escort who falls in love with the son of a Russian oligarch, only to have his parents try to force an annulment.
The film also stars Mark Eydelshteyn, Vache Tovmaysa, Yura Borisov, and Karren Karagulian. Baker wrote and directed the film, which clocks in at 2 hours and 19 minutes, the longest of his career.
SYNOPSIS: Anora, a young sex worker from Brooklyn, gets her chance at a Cinderella story when she meets and impulsively marries the son of an oligarch. Once the news reaches Russia, her fairytale is threatened as the parents set out for New York to get the marriage annulled.
NEON knows its way around the handling of Palme d’Or winners, including Triangle of Sadness, Parasite, and Anatomy of a Fall. Each of those films went on to be Best Picture contenders at the Oscars.
Anora opens in theaters on October 18th.