Sean Baker's 'Anora' swept the Palme d'Or and a stack of Oscars, and the discourse has barely cooled down. Some say it's a raw, electric portrait of class and survival that no other film dared to make — others say it's a critic-bait indie that real audiences found exhausting and hollow. Which side are you on?
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Add your commentanyone who thinks this film is critic bait has not actually sat with the ending. like genuinely. the ending reframes EVERYTHING that came before it. it's not a quirky indie romp. it's a tragedy disguised as a comedy and it hit me like a truck.
Yura Borisov alone deserves every award on the planet. The scene at the end where he's just sitting with her in the car — no words, nothing — I genuinely had to pause the film and collect myself. That is what cinema is for.
My honest opinion after watching it three times: it's a top-10 film of the 2020s so far. Baker understood something that almost no filmmaker does right now — that you can make a film about someone in a precarious situation without making it poverty porn or a rescue fantasy. She saves herself. That matters.
The class politics angle is only overstated if you've never been on Anora's side of that equation. I grew up really poor and watching her navigate spaces where she fundamentally doesn't belong and everyone knows it — that's not just a plot point, that's every family gathering I went to after marrying into money.
Watched it twice. First time I thought it was messy and overlong. Second time I realized the mess IS the point. Anora is chaos because her whole life has been chaos. Baker is one of the few directors working today who actually respects people who are struggling.
The fact that it won Best Picture at the Oscars while something like Conclave or The Brutalist was nominated tells me the Academy made the right call for once in about fifteen years. It's the most alive film in the whole lineup.
i showed this to my mum who never watches indie films and she cried at the end and said it reminded her of decisions she made when she was young. that's the test for me. if it reaches someone who has zero interest in film culture, it's the real thing.
I'm from Brighton originally and moved to NYC. I work in a restaurant in midtown and half my coworkers have either seen this or know someone who lives the life it portrays. It's not a fantasy version of sex work — it's just honest. That honesty SCARED people.
That's actually intentional though?? He's not supposed to be a full person because to the system around him he's never HAD to be. His parents treat him like a child, Anora treats him like a lottery ticket, his friends treat him like a boss. Nobody in the film sees him clearly either.
The Yura Borisov hype is completely earned. What I find interesting is that he barely speaks English and yet his performance is the most emotionally articulate thing in the whole film. Acting truly is a physical language.
People said the same thing about Tangerine in 2015. Baker's films have a way of quietly accumulating importance over time rather than burning bright and fading. I'd take that bet.
Sean Baker deserves enormous credit but let's also talk about the cinematography. Shooting Brighton Beach and those New York interiors with that kind of warmth and grain — it looked like a memory even while it was happening. Genuinely beautiful work.
I run a small film club and we screened this last month. The room was completely split. Three people loved it, three people were bored out of their minds by the middle section, and one person walked out. That range of reactions tells you this is real art, not manufactured prestige.
I think people who call it critic bait are accidentally admitting they only trust films that are comfortable. Anora is SUPPOSED to make you squirm. The discomfort is the whole point of the exercise.
The Palme d'Or going to an American film about a sex worker felt like Cannes trying to prove it's still edgy and relevant. I'm not saying the film is bad, I'm saying the conversation around it has been completely out of proportion to what's actually on screen.
Overlong. Could have been 90 minutes and been a masterpiece. At 139 minutes it's a very good film with a saggy middle that Baker clearly fell too in love with to cut. Someone needed to be braver in the editing room.
Fair point technically but the critical consensus absolutely shapes awards momentum. You know this. A film can have jury and Academy support precisely because the critical atmosphere around it is so overwhelming. These systems don't operate in a vacuum.
Critics love films about marginalized communities when a prestige director is holding the camera. The same story directed by someone without Baker's festival pedigree would never have gotten within a mile of Cannes. Make of that what you will.
Hot take: Mikey Madison was good but not THAT good. She got carried by the script and the supporting cast. The Academy was clearly just in the mood for something scrappy and indie after years of prestige biopics.
Just to be factually accurate: the Palme d'Or is voted on by a jury, not critics. And the Oscar is voted by Academy members, not the press. So the whole 'critics fell in love with it' framing in the question doesn't even hold up logically.
The Russian oligarch kid character was the weakest link for me. He felt like a plot device more than a person. I never believed him as a real human being for a single second of the film.
Honestly the whole class politics angle is kinda overstated. Rich boy marries poor girl, rich family disapproves, things go badly. This plot has existed since Cinderella. I don't understand why people are treating it like some grand revelation.
Films like this win big awards and then disappear from the cultural conversation within six months. Let's revisit this thread in 2027 and see if anyone is still talking about Anora. I'll bet you they're not.
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