Why Anora, Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or-winning stripper drama, doesn’t fall into male gaze

US filmmaker Baker talks about winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes for Anora and how he ensured it was filmed with sensitivity

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Mark Edelstein as oligarch’s son Ivan (centre, left) and Mikey Madison as Anora in a still from Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or-winning film Anora.

James Mottram

Published: 4:15pm, 30 Oct 2024

To claim that this is the year that Sean Baker truly arrived feels like a strange thing to say.

The American filmmaker has been chipping away for years, ever since he made his debut in 2000 with Four Letter Words, about a group of young men shooting the breeze over 24 hours. Along the way, there have been breakout moments, like 2015’s Tangerine, a story of sex workers in Los Angeles shot entirely on an iPhone 5s.

Yet nothing has quite touched the success of his latest film. The story of a Brooklyn lap dancer, Anora took the Cannes Film Festival’s prestigious Palme d’Or, putting the 53 year-old writer-director in rarefied company.

On that night in May, just as Star Wars creator George Lucas was receiving an honorary Palme, it dawned on Baker and his team that they were the winners. “We’re just giving each other the poker face wide eyes … like, ‘Is this truly happening’? And then everything after that is a flash.”

When we speak, Baker is still trying to process what happened. “This was my dream come true. This is what I’ve been focusing on for the last 30 years,” he says.

“And that is no embellishment there. And I actually thought it was going to happen later in life. I thought I was going to have to travel a very long road and maybe win it at 80. So I wasn’t expecting it.