Sean Baker is a filmmaker who’s always interested me, but until Anora I’d never seen anything made by him. I had the chance to see it at a film festival in October 2024 – the peak of its festival buzz period, but instead chose to see The Order (2024). Fast forward to 2025, and after winning several prizes including Best Picture at the Academy Awards, Anora has entered the hallowed grounds of the Criterion Criterion.
The film follows the titular Anora “Ani” Mikheeva (Mikey Madison), who works as a stripper and winds up marrying Ivan “Vanya” Zakharov (Mark Eydelshteyn) – the son of a Russian oligarch. Vanya’s parents oppose the union and fly from Russia to break up the marriage, and from the honeymoon period various problems ensue for Ani and her new spouse over the course of 139 minutes. The film manages to be a several types of movie during its two plus hour runtime, initially setting itself up as an improbable love story between a sex worker and a wealthy kid who’s never worked a day in his life. After that it becomes a thriller, with Ani held captive by Russian mobsters, before pivoting once more to resemble a screwball comedy as Ani joins forces with the Russian Mobsters to track down her missing husband – and all in time for a satisfying conclusion.
The plot is somewhat segmented, and some sections can last a bit too long – including the screwball chase and part when Ani is held captive. The film slows down to a crawl during these parts, and lingers too long on certain characters and scenes, which may be why I found the length of the film was a downside as it wasn’t always able to fill its runtime meaningfully. Anora is still a good film that, while enjoyable, doesn’t feel like a winner of the Best Picture Oscar – at least not to me. If you compare it with other winners of that Academy Award from just this century then, in my opinion, it doesn’t quite match up – but it shouldn’t be judged solely on its accolades. There are other aspects to judge Anora, its strengths being the direction, the cinematography by Drew Daniels, and acting, while it’s main weakness is the extended runtime, as more time to fill means stretching the plot too thin.
Mikey Madison is great as the titular Anora, and it’s not controversial that she was nominated for, and won, an Oscar as her acting is definitely worthy of the plaudits. It’s also nice to see an Indie director like Sean Baker win awards that would normally have gone to more heavily financed studio productions with lots of backing – especially as Anora’s success further highlights the importance and eternal value of the Indie film scene.
The Criterion Collection release of Anora includes two audio commentaries, the first featuring director Sean Baker, Alex Coco, producer Samantha Quan and cinematographer Drew Daniels; the second features Sean Baker (again), and actors Yura Borisov, Mark Eydelshteyn, Karren Karagulian, Mikey Madison, and Vache Tovmasyan. There are also a bunch of other extras: a new “Making of …” documentary; a new interview with Mikey Madison and Sean Baker; the press conference from the Cannes Film Festival; a Q&A with Madison and actor-stripper Lindsey Normington; deleted scenes; audition footage; and essays by film critic Dennis Lim and author Kier-La Janisse.
ANORA IS OUT NOW ON CRITERION COLLECTON UK BLU-RAY
