ANORA

Summer has finally arrived, so FOMO is bringing CANNES HEAT to the big screen: a week of scandalous, divisive, seductive films that shocked audiences, split critics and turned desire into cinema history.

ANORA begins like a dirty modern fairy tale, then spends the rest of its runtime taking the fantasy apart. Mikey Madison plays Ani, a young sex worker from Brooklyn whose life changes when she meets the reckless son of a Russian oligarch. A sudden marriage turns her into a Cinderella figure with a very unstable prince, a lot of cash nearby, and several furious adults on the way to clean up the mess.

Sean Baker has built his career around people living on the edges of American respectability, from TANGERINEto THE FLORIDA PROJECT and RED ROCKET. Here he works on a bigger scale without losing the street-level detail. ANORA is fast, funny, vulgar, chaotic and finally much sadder than it first appears.

I decided to include ANORA in this week’s CANNES HEAT program less for the scandal, there wasn’t much, and more for the heat it brings. It premiered in Competition in 2024, won the Palme d’Or, and turned Mikey Madison into one of the most talked-about actors of the year.

Madison is extraordinary. She gives Ani speed, humour, toughness and a kind of wary optimism that makes the film’s later turns hit harder. ANORA understands glamour as something temporary, expensive and usually owned by someone else. Baker asks the audience to enjoy the fantasy of sudden escape, then shows how quickly money, class and male entitlement can turn that fantasy into a negotiation.