Watch: Filmmaker Sean Baker’s Journey to Making ‘Anora’ Featurette

Watch: Filmmaker Sean Baker’s Journey to Making ‘Anora’ Featurette

by Alex Billington
February 7, 2025
Source: YouTube

“I think the biggest challenge is simply – sticking with it.” Neon has revealed a lovely featurette celebrating filmmaker Sean Baker. We’re into the final month of the awards season, ending with the Academy Awards on March 2, and Baker’s film Anora has a grand total of six nominations. It’s still my frontrunner for Best Picture – and maybe a few others. Ani, a young sex worker from Brooklyn, gets her chance at a Cinderella story when she meets and then impulsively marries the son of a Russian oligarch named Vanya (aka Ivan). Once the news reaches Russia, their little fairytale is threatened as the parents set out for New York to get the marriage annulled. So begins 24 hours of stressful NYC mayhem as hired goons pick her up and try to find Ivan. Mikey Madison stars as Ani as one of this year’s big breakouts, with Mark Eydelshteyn, Yura Borisov, Karren Karagulian, & Vache Tovmasyan. Anora opened in US theaters last year. It’s Baker’s eighth feature film so far in his career (all 8 of them are worth watching), and he won the Palme d’Or at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. Will he go all the way and win Best Picture next? It could happen – deserves it.

Here’s the awards featurette Sean Baker’s 30 Year Journey to Anora, direct from Neon’s YouTube:

You can rewatch the first US trailer for Sean Baker’s Anora right here, and the international trailer here.

Ani (Mikey Madison) is a young Uzbek-American stripper from Brighton Beach, a Russophone enclave in New York City. As she is somewhat conversant in Russian, her boss at the strip club fixes her up with a Russian-speaking client. After meeting Vanya, the son of a Russian oligarch, a romance kindles that leads to their elopement while on a trip to Las Vegas. Their fairytale marriage is threatened when the man’s parents travel to New York to force an annulment. Anora is written and directed by acclaimed American filmmaker Sean Baker, director of the films Four Letter Words, Take Out, Prince of Broadway, Starlet, Tangerine, The Florida Project, and Red Rocket previously. Produced by Alex Coco, Samantha Quan, and Sean Baker. This first premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival earlier this year (read our review). Neon already released Anora in select US theaters starting October 18th, 2024 last fall. It’s now nominated for six Academy Awards & also earned Sean Baker a DGA Award nomination. One of our favorite films of 2024.

Find more posts in: Featurette, Indies, To Watch, Trailer