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Bill Maher returned to the topic of the Best Picture Oscar winner Anora on Friday’s Real Time with Bill Maher.

Last week, Maher posited that Sean Baker’s indie hit winning the big prize on Oscar night was helped by the Karla Sofía Gascón controversies that tainted her leading Oscar nominee Emilia Pérez.

This week on his HBO show, Maher held up Anora in a “New Rules” segment about “whores having a moment,” questioning when the term “sex worker community” became the norm, playing clips of both Mikey Madison and Baker thanking the group during their Oscar acceptance speeches.

Comparing the phrase to when the term “homeless” became “unhoused” and “illegal alien” became “undocumented migrant,” Maher said argued that the repositioning can be looked at as a detriment.

“You can get so caught up in the virtue signaling that you actually do harm to the cause, and using ‘sex...

After dedicating his entire filmography to an overlooked portion of America, Sean Baker has finally gotten the recognition he deserved. His movie Anora not only brought home the prestigious Palme d'Or but also won a Best Picture award at the Oscars. In addition, Baker received awards for the film's editing, screenplay, and most notoriously, for achievement in directing.

Anora and Sean Baker's wins are a symbolic win for indie cinema overall. It shows that everyone who starts small can dream big. Baker has always advocated for the importance of watching movies on the big screen and for stories about minorities and the oppressed. Anora and the seven movies he'd made before it share an important, singular message while dealing with a variety of topics and characters from different backgrounds: the only thing society can't take from us is our humanity. Here is every movie directed by Sean Baker, from worst to best.

Sean Baker had a history-making night at the Oscars, winning Best Original Screenplay, Best Editing, Best Director, and Best Picture for "Anora," while star Mikey Madison took home the statue for Best Actress for her performance as Ani. As a result, Baker had four opportunities to speak to the world at large through his acceptance speeches, and he came prepared. He encouraged audiences to watch movies on the big screen since independent theaters need support now more than ever, at the same time promoting the importance of independent cinema and telling unique stories. He also, given the subject of "Anora," opened his night by thanking the sex work community.

"I want to thank the sex worker community. They have shared their stories. They have shared their life experience with me over the years. My deepest respect. Thank you — I share this with you," he said. Madison echoed the sentiment in her own acceptance speech,...

Throughout his speeches for his record-breaking four Oscar wins yesterday (the most amount ever awarded to one person for one film), Sean Baker thanked his team, his distributors, his cast, and his crew, and the sex-worker community, and his dog Bunsen. By the time Anora bagged Best Picture, the orchestra once more striking up Take That’s ‘Greatest Day’, there was barely anyone left to thank. Just as Anora is a fairy-tale story, this was a fairy-tale win for, as Baker said during his final speech, “a truly independent film” made by someone who, a decade ago, was on the verge of jacking it all in.

I first met Baker in 2015, interviewing him for his fifth feature, the transgender sex-worker comedy drama Tangerine, which tore through the screen just as its protagonists tore through Hollywood. Its heroines were hustlers, as was Baker, not that he particularly wanted to be. He...

So many of the greats had come close.

Francis Ford Coppola had a good shot at doing it.

Alfonso Cuarón and Chloé Zhao got halfway to doing it.

Walt Disney needed a whole bunch of movies to do it.

Bong Joon Ho nearly did it.

But until Sunday, no filmmaker had done it — it: won four Academy Awards for the same movie.

That’s exactly what Sean Baker pulled off when he landed Oscars for producing, directing, writing and editing the original film Anora on Sunday.

How is it that this had never happened in the 96 previous Academy Awards ceremonies, with all the greats that had come before? Well, Walt Disney won four Oscars in 1954 — for four different films.

Cuarón and Zhao landed four nominations each in 2019 and 2021, respectively, for their films Roma and Nomadland…but won only two apiece.

Coppola took home three prizes in 1974 for The Godfather: Part II...

Hit the Atm? How about hitting the jackpot? “Anora” has won the Oscar for Best Picture at the 2025 Academy Awards, capping off a remarkable awards season run that began with the Sean Baker film starring Mikey Madison winning the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival last May. It’s only the fourth film ever to win Best Picture at the Oscars after winning the Palme, following “The Lost Weekend,” “Marty,” and “Parasite.” And IndieWire has celebrated “Anora” since it premiered at Cannes, through our Future of Filmmaking Summit, where Baker was our keynote speaker, to Oscar night itself.

“Anora” finished the night with five Oscar wins: Best Picture, Best Actress Mikey Madison, Best Editing, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Director. Of these, Baker personally won four, as the film’s director, producer, editor, and screenwriter.

Producer Alex Coco said when accepting his Best Picture Oscar, “If you’re trying to make independent films,...

Anora has won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, with writer-director Sean Baker taking home the statuette. The win is Baker’s first at the Academy Awards, where he’s personally scored his first set of four nominations this year, from the film’s set of six.

In his acceptance speech, Baker said, “I want to thank the sex worker community. They have shared their stories. They have shared their life experience with me over the years. My deepest respect. Thank you — I share this with you.”

Baker also thanked Neon, FilmNation, Focus Features/Universal Pictures, Le Pacte, his “incredible cast,” who “elevated everything I wrote and made me look very good,” and finally, his fellow producers on the project, Samantha Quan and Alex Coco.

For Baker, Anora is just the latest film to spotlight the sex worker community. An interest in authentically examining the lives of underrepresented individuals has...

Anora Movie Review Rating:

Star Cast: Mikey Madison, Yura Borisov, Mark Eydelshteyn, Vache Tovmasyan, and Karren Karagulian.

Director: Sean Baker

Anora Movie Review (Photo Credit – YouTube)

What’s Good: The performances, the visuals, the score, and the energy are out of this world.

What’s Bad: There is nothing bad about the film, but the chaotic nature of it might overwhelm some people.

Loo Break: There are no loo breaks in Anora as the film’s pace is frenetic and has no room for filler.

Watch or Not?: Anora is a must-watch for cinema fans worldwide, especially now that it has received so many Oscar nominations.

Language: English (with subtitles).

Available On: Theaters, VOD

Runtime: 139 Minutes.

User Rating:

Opening:

Throughout his career, Sean Baker has become one of the most singular filmmakers in North America, thanks to his inclination to tell stories that feel real and look real while...

With final Oscar balloting closed on February 18, we’re continuing with our eighth annual series of interviews with Academy voters from different branches for their unfiltered takes on what got picked, overlooked, and overvalued in the 2025 award season. Voter’s picks are in bold. Interview edited for brevity.

Best Picture

“Anora.” I went with “A Complete Unknown” for such a long time, for two months before I saw “Anora.” Just the balancing act of the humor, the tension, the male gaze sexiness, and [Anora’s] character being so aggressive and tough and not taking shit, this long-lost child inside. When that last scene happened, it broke your heart, and [Mikey Madison] was so good in it. And the boyfriend [Mark Eydelshteyn], from the moment he walked on the screen, I wanted to do violence to him. Every chance she gets, she would go in his lap and snuggle up and there’d be no conversation.

This year’s five best director Oscar nominees — Jacques Audiard (Emilia Pérez), Sean Baker (Anora), Brady Corbet (The Brutalist), Coralie Fargeat (The Substance) and James Mangold (A Complete Unknown) — sat down for a conversation at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival on Monday to discuss their group of films, both separately and together.

In a chat moderated by The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg at the Arlington Theatre, Audiard kicked things off with a short discussion of Emilia Pérez, as he noted the film had a smaller budget than most American musicals and dubbed it, “a modest musical. It was my first time doing a musical, but it was also my first time working entirely in a studio, and that for me was both a shock and a tremendous discovery. I absolutely loved doing it because working in the studio allowed me to attain a level of stylization that I...

Director Sean Baker has revealed that his mother didn't approve of his script for Anora. The story follows an exotic dancer who meets and quickly marries Ivan, the son of a Russian oligarch. Upon learning about the marriage, Ivan's parents rush to America to get the marriage annulled. The cast of Anora includes Mikey Madison, Mark Eydelshteyn, Karren Karagulian, Yuriy Borisov, and Vache Tovmasyan. Reviews have been exceptional, and the film currently has a score of 94% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Despite Anora's strong reviews, it seems that Baker's mother has no interest in the movie's content. While speaking at the 2025 NYFCC ceremony (as reported by IndieWire), after winning the Best Screenplay award, Baker admitted that his mother didn't like his initial pitch for Anora. During his acceptance speech, Baker claimed that his mother wouldn't agree with their choice, and revealed that she didn't even make it through his previous film,...

The American indie director who made his mark with Tangerine and The Florida Project, and whose latest film, Anora, is an Oscars favourite, owes an unlikely debt to British social realists Mike Leigh and Ken Loach

Last month I wrote about British film-maker Mike Leigh creating a “string of perfectly crafted dramas with an uncanny element of verisimilitude” – dramas such as the 1996 Palme d’Or winner Secrets & Lies, which went on to win five Oscar nominations including best picture. It’s no surprise to learn that one of Leigh’s greatest admirers is Sean Baker, the American independent director (born in New Jersey in 1971) whose most recent feature, Anora, similarly scooped the Palme d’Or last May and is now shaping up as an Oscars frontrunner.

Although their film-making styles are distinctly different, Baker and Leigh share a guiding dramatic principal: to portray real people in real situations with which the audience can empathise.

This year I lost my London Film Festival virginity and amongst some of the incredible films I was enthralled by I caught my number 1 for this year’s Top Ten. I am a woman who unashamedly wears her emotions very proudly on the surface but this is also the year I developed my tactical cry, where I had to rush to the bathroom after screenings to release the raw and unrestrained pouring of emotions films evoked in me so I was able to pass through Picture House Central and the BFI Southbank and network without being a snotty mess. Here at Directors Notes, we launched our BIFA partnership for The Douglas Hickox Award and I was truly blown away by the talent, execution and fucking formidable stories told by these debut feature filmmakers – none of which was even comparable to each other. I ended the year in a very traditional...

Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series spotlighting the scripts fueling the year’s most talked-about movies continues with Neon’s Anora, a zany romantic comedy written and directed by Sean Baker. The film, which won the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, stars Mikey Madison as Anora, a sex worker from Brooklyn whose life takes an unexpected turn when she meets and impulsively marries the son of a billionaire oligarch.

Neon released Anora on October 18, and it has grossed $29.5 million to date at the global box office. The pic has been a major presence during awards season, having scored a co-leading five Indie Spirit Awards nominations, seven Critics Choice noms and five Golden Globe noms including for directing and screenplay, and Best Picture. The Los Angeles Film Critics named it film of the year, and it’s on several Top 10 lists including AFI‘s.

Set over three contrasting acts,...

Sean Baker broke some news to IndieWire at the red carpet of the Gotham Awards in New York City December 2. The “Anora” director shared that several of his earlier films are getting Criterion Collection releases — and that he hopes to get his next film off the ground “Asap.”

The Palme d’Or winner has made no secret of his love for Criterion in the past, being one of the first directors to visit the Criterion Closet back in 2015 and sharing his Top 10 titles from the Collection around the same time for Criterion’s website. He also spoke at length to IndieWire about his belief that a love of older movies informs his own skillset as a filmmaker.

But to date, Baker only has one title that’s received a physical Criterion Collection release, his 2004 breakout film “Take Out,” which he co-directed with Shih Ching-Tsou. More, however, are on the way.

There's a moment in "The Florida Project," the Willem Dafoe-starring drama from Sean Baker about a six-year-old girl named Moonee (Brooklynn Prince) living in a motel with her mother Halley (Bria Vinaite), that I think about daily. Halley and one of her friends go out to eat one night and get food from a stand. We know that Halley doesn't have a lot of money — we've watched her steal, scam, and engage in sex work to make ends meet — but she still puts a tip in the jar for the food stand worker. To those who have never grown up poor, it's a moment that likely went unnoticed. But to those of us who have, it was a signal that this film came from someone who genuinely wanted to present an authentic look at how people living in poverty make joy in their lives without financial security. That includes always tipping service industry workers,...

It’s fair to say Sean Baker is trying to change how people look at sex workers.

In his iPhone-shot 2015 indie “Tangerine” he explored a friendship between two transgender sex workers who find solace in their support of one another. In “Starlet” and “Red Rocket,” he used the porn industry as a way of dissecting issues around finding connection and building trust. Most recently, in his Palme d’Or winning “Anora,” Baker follows an exotic dancer given the chance at a fairytale lifestyle free of gentlemen’s clubs and scuzzy men…or, at least, so she thinks. Despite a deep, grounded understanding of these stigmatized and marginalized communities, Baker isn’t placing all his chips on these stories and doesn’t want to be tied to only making films about this group.

“I never wanted it to become a shtick of mine or anything like that,” Baker told the crowd...

Anora Box Office (North America): Hits Its First Milestone( Photo Credit – Instagram )

Anora, starring Mikey Madison in the titular role, is performing well for a limited release. The movie has hit a significant milestone at the box office in North America. It has also beaten Tom Hardy’s Venom: The Last Dance with its average per theatre number on Friday. The romance comedy movie was widely praised upon its premiere at the 77th Cannes Film Festival this year. It achieved an amazing feat in over a decade. Scroll below for the deets.

It is a romantic comedy written, directed, and edited by Sean Baker. Baker is known for directing independent feature films about the lives of marginalized people. He has made movies like Take Out, Starlet, and Tangerine. The theatres are filled with multiple releases, some big ones, yet this romantic comedy is paving its path towards a successful run.

“Anora,” the winner of the 2024 Palme d’Or, is a film that’s all too easy to describe as a star is born moment. The film, a madcap romance between the wealthy son of a Russian oligarch and a Brighton Beach sex worker that channels everything from the screwball comedies of Ernst Lubitsch to the intimate neo-realist dramas of Federico Fellini features a performance from Mikey Madison in the lead role that feels destined to raise the “Better Things” and “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” star’s profile immediately.

Beyond its leading lady, “Anora” also feels like it’s destined to be the moment where its director Sean Baker goes from indie darling to award darling. Baker, who made his directorial debut in the year 2000 with the obscure “Four Letter Words,” has slowly risen in stature for years now. After three more features — “Take Out,” “Prince of Broadway,...

Anora, his tragi-comedy about a lapdancer who marries a Russian oligarch’s son, is the latest in a line of acclaimed movies about sex work. The Hollywood outsider talks about his anxieties over A-listers and the dangers of partying in his 50s

Sean Baker is fastidious about research, plunging himself into the milieu of whatever he happens to be making a movie about. And yes, he knows how that looks. “People online are like, ‘Oh, Sean is such a horndog! That’s the only reason he makes those films.’” He gives one of his joyful, crinkle-faced grins, his eyes vanishing into creases, his entire face seeming to smile. At 53, he looks as if he fell in the fountain of youth. His boyish ebullience and tousled hair lend him a Richie Cunningham wholesomeness which contrasts amusingly with the subjects of his films, if not with their bubbly, irrepressible tone.

His charming fourth feature,...

[Editor’s note: The following essay contains major spoilers for “Anora.”]

Why do men do the things they do to women? Why do they offer affection and hope when all they’re really capable of is self-satisfaction? Why do they prop themselves as something they’re not at the expense of the physical and emotional well-beings of others? This is not to say women aren’t guilty of the same cruelties, but in a world where women continue to be persecuted, having their health, financial livelihoods, education, and more subject to legal control while men walk the Earth freely, seemingly bound by only the Darwinian laws of nature, I think it’s fair to say that one gender is granted a much wider latitude over the other. And why is that so? It was these questions that rattled through my brain as I took in every thrilling high and tragic low of Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or-winning “Anora” and...

If there’s a thematic thread that ties the plots of Sean Baker’s films together, it’s that much of their wildest narrative developments might be avoidable in a country with a less uptight attitude toward sexuality than America. Since first exploring the world of sex work with his 2012 independent breakout Starlet, the writer-director’s filmmaking interests have never strayed too far from the industry. While the tone of his stories range from madcap comedy (2015’s Tangerine), to wrenching social realism (2017’s The Florida Project), to provocative character study (2021’s Red Rocket), the colorful craziness undergirding all of them stems from a deeply American aversion to the world’s oldest profession.

Baker’s Palme d’Or-winning Anora synthesizes over a decade of work into a single feature. This exhaustive exploration of the promises and pratfalls of a sex worker’s life begins as a fairy-tale romance for Mikey Madison...

At this year’s Cannes Film Festival, director Sean Baker won the Palme d’Or when his romantic drama Anora was chosen as the Best Feature Film of the Official Competition. The movie has been generating Oscar buzz ever since, with Variety reporting that lead actress Mikey Madison could be one of the “few sure-fire bets” in the Best Actress category, while Baker could end up being nominated as producer, director, writer, and editor. That all remains to be seen, but soon enough we’ll find out how a wider audience responds to the film, as Neon (the distributor behind Best Picture winner Parasite) will be giving Anora a theatrical release this Friday, October 18th. With just a few days to go until that date arrives, a new trailer for the film has been unveiled, and you can check that out in the embed above.

The story Baker crafted for...

It’s IndieWire’s honor to announce that Sean Baker will be joining us in a keynote chat for our Future of Filmmaking Summit, happening in Los Angeles on November 2.

Baker, who won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in May for his latest film “Anora” — a major player this awards season — will share his advice to summit attendees and his thoughts about where the industry is going. For a limited time, IndieWire is offering an early-bird discount, with tickets for the all-day event being just $125.

Purchase Early Bird Discount Tickets Here

A testament to adaptation and flexibility while never losing sight of his voice, Baker’s career includes acclaimed low-budget features “Prince of Broadway,” “Starlet,” and “Tangerine.” His 2017 drama “The Florida Project” premiered at Director’s Fortnight in Cannes and received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for Willem Dafoe. In 2021, “Red Rocket” became his first film in the...

With the awards race ramping up, and festival favorites emerging, the list of films in the Best Picture Oscar race can seem long, and, this early in the season, distinctly unclear. Fortunately, both Deadline’s Awards Columnist and Chief Film Critic, Pete Hammond, and Film Awards Editor Damon Wise keep on hand an ever-evolving dossier of ones to watch. But then, of course, they don’t always agree. So, we got them together to boil it all down in a back-and-forth: What’s hot, what’s not, and what’s got big-prize potential. Bear in mind, there are, of course, more films yet to come, and for brevity’s sake, not every film with broad Oscar potential could be included in this discussion, but here are Hammond and Wise in conversation about some of the films on their maybe-Best-Picture lists right now. Click on each film’s title to read Deadline’s review.

Sean Baker, director of Cannes’ Palme d’Or winner Anora, discussed the success of his latest movie at a San Sebastian Film Festival event Saturday, admitting that he won’t be using the momentum to take on big-budget studio films like Marvel’s.

Baker spoke to a packed crowd about his film — now receiving Oscar buzz — which follows Anora (Mikey Madison), a young sex worker from Brooklyn, who gets her chance at a Cinderella story when she meets and impulsively marries the son of an oligarch (Mark Eydelshteyn). But the fairytale is threatened when her fiancé’s parents set out to get the marriage annulled. The story has drawn comparisons to the Julia Roberts standby Pretty Woman.

Baker’s follow-up to Red Rocket, Anora earned high praise from critics out of Cannes. The movie is getting a whole host of air time ahead of the awards season, debuting in Cannes before screening at Venice,...

Natalie Portman, Michelle Williams and Sebastian Stan have joined the roster of Hollywood stars set to attend the 50th edition of France’s Deauville American Film Festival.

The festival announced Thursday that it would fete Portman and Williams with its Deauville Talent Award at the upcoming edition (running from September 6 to 15) in the presence of the stars.

Stan is also set to attend receive its Nouvel Hollywood award in the wake of recent performances in The Apprentice and A Different Man, which will screen at the festival as part of its Premieres line-up.

He joins Daisy Ridley, whose presence in Deauville for same award was announced last week. Previous recipients of the award feting rising Hollywood talents include Robert Pattinson, Ryan Gosling and Emilia Clarke.

In other additions to the program, Deauville also revealed that it would be welcoming back Cannes 2024 Palme d’Or winner Sean Baker, who has a long history with the festival.

Natalie Portman, Michelle Williams and Sebastian Stan will be honored at the Deauville American Film Festival which celebrates this year its 50th anniversary in the seaside town of French Normandy.

Portman and Williams will receive the Deauville Talent Award for their career achievements, while Stan will be honored with the Hollywood Rising Star Award.

“Portman has always taken on demanding roles (…) that are marked by this ambivalent presence, a mixture of strength and fragility. She has proven throughout her career that she can play all kinds of characters with depth and accuracy,” stated the Deauville Film Festival which is under the new leadership of Aude Hesbert.

Portman earned a Golden Globe nomination for her role in Todd Haynes’ “May December” which was presented at the Deauville Film Festival in 2023. The actor was already celebrated last year with a Deauville honorary tribute but was not able to attend the festival due to the SAG-AFTRA strike.

Director Sean Baker and his Anora star Mikey Madison have spoken about the “collaborative” process of portraying sex workers in a film that he acknowledged hearkens back to the captivating love story in Pretty Woman.

Baker spoke with his cast at Cannes’ press conference for the film, which follows Anora (Madison), a young sex worker from Brooklyn, who gets her chance at a Cinderella story when she meets and impulsively marries the son of an oligarch (Mark Eydelshteyn). But the fairytale is threatened when her fiancé’s parents set out to get the marriage annulled.

“Mikey had so much to do with the development of Anora,” Baker said as he lauded his lead actress. “I wrote the script for Mikey. We had a meeting and asked if she was interested, I said: ‘Okay, I’m going to write you a script and come back in three months.’ It took a year.

Better Things actress Mikey Madison goes the distance in a raw and revealing performance as a high-class stripper who is romanced, and married by, the son of a Russian oligarch in Sean Baker’s Anora.

The pic is one of many in Baker’s canon, including Starlet and Red Rocket, that centers on a sex worker. In fact, the filmmaker said Wednesday at a Cannes Film Festival press conference for Anora that “my next film involves a sex worker.”

Why is Baker so hot for the subject?

“It’s important to explore what sex work is in the modern age and how it applies in a capitalist society; it’s a job, a livelihood, it’s a job, it’s a career and it should be respected.”

“In my opinion, I’m speaking for myself, be decriminalized and not in any way regulated,” he added. “It’s a sex worker...

At a Cannes press conference for his new film “Anora” on Wednesday, Sean Baker discussed his affinity for making films about sex workers — and teased his next film.

“Anora,” which premiered at the film festival on Tuesday, follows a strip club worker who falls in love with the son of a Russian oligarch. When asked about how sex workers came to be the subject of the last five of his movies, Baker said after making 2012’s “Starlet,” he was “introduced to the adult film world.”

“I became friends with [sex workers] and realized there were a million stories from that world. If there is one intention with all of these films, I would say it’s by telling human stories, by telling stories that are hopefully universal,” he said. “It’s helping remove the stigma that’s been applied to this livelihood, that’s always been applied to this livelihood.”

Baker said...

Sean Baker’s previous film, 2022’s Red Rocket (2022), began with *Nsync’s Spotify-topping “Bye Bye Bye,” but Anora starts with the slightly lesser-known “Greatest Days” by British boy band Take That. Musically, it’s a bold choice, at odds with the frenetic spirit of what for over half its running time is a high-decibel screwball comedy that spends a lot of time in its establishing scenes in a New York strip joint.

The tentative nature of the lyric however — “This could be the greatest day of our lives” — is slyly indicative of where this modern Cinderella story is going, a film of three parts that accelerates at speed, cruises at high altitude for a surprisingly long time, then comes back down to earth with a deeply affecting and almost unbearably melancholy coda that sends the audience out in silence.

The opening suggests a sister piece to Baker’s 2012 film Starlet,...

Think about the experience of sitting and watching a movie. What is it about that big, wonderful image that connects with you? If you’re a diehard cineaste the answer might be the film’s cinematography or its use of music, special effects, sound design or something else. But for most audiences, chances are that the primary point of connection is the characters—and probably the actors embodying them.

It’s these performances that we identify with, root against and even lust after. But as much as their agents and managers might care for you to believe otherwise, actors don’t pop up in these roles by accident. Enter the Casting Director.

One of the most important (and unsung) positions on any film crew, the Casting Director is the person responsible for assembling the actors tasked with translating the script’s character description and dialogue into flesh-and-blood.

Below, we’ve...

The Florida Project director Sean Baker has come on board to executive produce Modern Whore, Nicole Bazuin’s documentary adaptation of Andrea Werhun’s sex work memoir.

The feature-length hybrid film is currently shooting narrative re-enactments as part of a doc based on Modern Whore: A Memoir, a 2022 book that recalled Werhun’s work as an escort and in strip clubs, for which Bazuin provided extensive photography.

The illustrated memoir in turn sprang from a 2020 short film Modern Whore that Werhun starred in, Bazuin directed and which had its world premiere at SXSW. The Modern Whore feature documentary will be told from Werhun’s perspective and have her portray her former escort alias Mary Ann and her stripper persona Sophia, as well a more recent foray into OnlyFans as part of her sex work career in Toronto.

The indie will also incorporate writing and collaborations with other sex workers telling their own stories.

Neon has acquired North American rights to the romantic dramedy Anora, the latest feature from award-winning indie filmmaker Sean Baker (The Florida Project). It will be released in theaters sometime next year.

Mikey Madison, Mark Eydelshteyn, Yuriy Borisov, Karren Karagulian, and Vache Tovmasyan star in the pic, shot on 35mm by DoP Drew Daniels, the synopsis for which remains under wraps. Samantha Quan, Alex Coco, and Baker served as producers. FilmNation Entertainment is handling worldwide rights, having already licensed to Le Pacte in France, Lev in Israel, Kismet in Australia and New Zealand, and Focus Features/Universal Pictures International for the rest of the world.

News of the acquisition follows Neon’s announcement of They Follow, a sequel to David Robert Mitchell’s cult classic horror It Follows, on which Mitchell is set to reteam with star Maika Monroe. Neon will produce, distribute and handle international sales. Other titles on...

Uma Thurman, Samuel L. Jackson and Joe Manganiello team up in upcoming Shout! Studios thriller The Kill Room, and the official trailer for the rated “R” movie has arrived.

The Kill Room will release in theaters on September 28, 2023.

IGN debuted the trailer this week. Check it out below.

The dark comedic thriller was directed by Nicol Paone and written by Jonathan Jacobson.

The Kill Room follows “an art dealer (Thurman) who teams with a hitman (Manganiello) and his boss (Jackson) for a money laundering scheme. The plan accidentally turns the hired killer into an overnight avant-garde sensation, forcing the dealer to play the art world against the underworld.”

Maya Hawke, Thurman’s real life daughter, also stars in the film.

“’The Kill Room’ is a sharp, darkly comic evisceration of the art collecting scene, delivered with wily relish by Uma Thurman and director Nicol Paone. We’re confident this will...

Shout Studios acquired North American rights to “The Kill Room,” a thriller starring Uma Thurman, Samuel L. Jackson and Joe Manganiello.

The distribution and production division of indie Shout Factory has emerged victorious in a bidding war at Cannes Film Festival. Shout Studios plans to release the film in theaters this fall.

“The Kill Room” was directed by Nicol Paone and written by Jonathan Jacobson. The dark comedic-thriller follows an art dealer (Thurman) who teams with a hitman (Manganiello) and his boss (Jackson) for a money laundering scheme. The plan accidentally turns the hired killer into an overnight avant-garde sensation, forcing the dealer to play the art world against the underworld.

“’The Kill Room’ is a sharp, darkly comic evisceration of the art collecting scene, delivered with wily relish by Uma Thurman and director Nicol Paone. We’re confident this will play very well with audiences who like their entertainment both witty and visceral,...

Mubi has announced its lineup of streaming offerings for next month, including the exclusive streaming premiere of Albert Serra’s extraordinary Pacifiction, a trio of films by Todd Haynes, two by Michael Haneke (Caché and Amour), plus works by David Cronenberg, Shin’ya Tsukamoto, and Derek Jarman.

Additional selections include Alice Rohrwacher’s Corpo Celeste, Luchino Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers, Sean Baker’s early film Starlet, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s short Mekong Hotel.

Check out the lineup below and get 30 days free here.

June 1 – Is This Fate?, directed by Helga Reidemeister | What Sets Us Free? German Feminist Cinema

June 2 – Safe, directed by Todd Haynes | I Really Love You: Three by Todd Hayne

June 3 – Caché, directed by Michael Haneke | Close-Up on Michael Haneke

June 4 – Amour, directed by Michael Haneke | Close-Up on Michael Haneke

June 5 – Topology of Sirens, directed by Jonathan Davies

June 6 – Tetsuo, the Iron Man, directed by Shin’ya...

Kim Kardashian close-up. Pic credit: @kimkardashian/Instagram

Kim Kardashian is proving she can work a caption, even if the aim is to have eyes on her unusual gym look.

The 41-year-old billionaire mogul made headlines over the weekend as she rocked a silky and nude-colored bikini and thigh-high boots for a gym session, and there was more to come.

Posting a 2.0 for her army of Instagram followers on Sunday, the Hulu star showed off her 2022 weight loss in a skimpy and pool-ready look as she posed from a gym and showed off the 25-pound dumbbells that she uses.

Kim highlighted her toned abs and curvy waist in a barely-there and tiny two-piece in satin, adding dramatic thigh boots with stiletto heels. She covered her shoulders a little with a tight white shrug while posing in low-key makeup and with her blonde hair down.

“I do my own heavy lifting,” the...

Exclusive: Dree Hemingway (The Unicorn) is the latest addition to the cast of Yale Entertainment’s darkly comedic thriller The Kill Room, from writer Jonathan Jacobson and director Nicol Paone. She joins an ensemble that also includes Uma Thurman, Samuel L. Jackson, Joe Manganiello, Maya Hawke, Debi Mazar and Larry Pine, as previously announced.

The Kill Room centers on hitman, Reggie (Manganiello), his boss (Jackson), an art dealer (Thurman) and their money laundering scheme that accidentally turns the hitman into an overnight Avant-Garde sensation, forcing the dealer to play the art world against the underworld. Hemingway will play Anika, the owner of a successful art gallery that rivals Thurman’s.

Jordan Yale Levine, Jordan Beckerman, and Jon Keeyes are producing under their Yale Productions banner alongside Anne Clements of Idiot Savant Pictures, Paone, Thurman, Dannielle Thomas and Jason Weinberg from Untitled Entertainment, and William Rosenfeld of Such Content. Executive producers include Robert Kapp,...

Editors note: Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series debuts and celebrates the scripts of films that will be factors in this year’s movie awards race.

Filmmaker Sean Baker (The Florida Project) had an unexpected inspiration for his latest film Red Rocket, which centers on fast-talking, washed-up porn star Mikey Saber (Simon Rex) who, having exhausted his options and goodwill in Los Angeles, returns to his Texas hometown where he quickly exerts his charming con artist patter to bend the locals, including his ex-wife, to his self-indulgent will.

Baker said the revelation that sparked the film came out of research he and co-screenwriter Chris Bergoch did for a previous project, Starlet, which was also set in the porn industry.

“Getting to know people within that industry, we realized there was this archetype, because we met a handful of men like Mikey Saber – and they even had a term applied to them within the industry,...

Multi-faceted filmmaker Mark Duplass discusses the movies he wishes more people knew about with hosts Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Duck Butter (2018)

The Puffy Chair (2005)

Prince Of Broadway (2008)

Tangerine (2015)

The Florida Project (2017) – Dennis Cozzalio’s review

Red Rocket (2021)

Starlet (2012)

Take Out (2004)

Mack & Rita (Tbd)

Old Joy (2006)

First Cow (2020)

Wendy And Lucy (2008) – Dennis Cozzalio’s favorite movie of 2020

Henry Fool (1997)

Trust (1990)

Amateur (1994)

Medicine For Melancholy (2008)

Shang-Chi (2021)

Your Sister’s Sister (2011)

My Effortless Brilliance (2008)

What the Funny (2008)

Humpday (2009)

True Adolescents (2009)

Man Push Cart (2005)

The White Tiger (2021)

Baghead (2008)

The Do-Deca-Pentathlon (2012)

Language Lessons (2021)

Stevie (2002)

Hoop Dreams (1994)

American Movie (1999)

What Happened Was… (1994) – Ti West’s trailer commentary

Manhunter (1986) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary

My Dinner With Andre (1981)

Creep (2014)

Grown-Ups (1980)

Abigail’s Party (1977)

Nuts In May (1976)

Secrets And Lies (1996) – Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review

Naked (1993)

Parallel Mothers (2021)

The Freebie (2010)

East Of Eden (1955) – Larry Cohen’s trailer commentary

Strange...

Red Rocket throws a curveball to viewers who think they know what to expect from a Sean Baker movie. There are surface commonalities connecting it to his previous works—docu-realistic stylings, detailed worldbuilding and the centering of marginalized communities. Yet, unlike his last three pictures Starlet, The Florida Project and Tangerine—which marinated in the humanity of, respectively, a young female porn star, transgender sex workers and a family living with invisible homelessness—the man under the magnifying-glass this time is an increasingly disturbing presence. Washed-up adult movie star Mikey Saber (played with real verve by Simon Rex) is selfish to the point of […]

The post “Embracing the Male Gaze”: Sean Baker on Red Rocket first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Sean Baker likes to turn his camera on the people and places Hollywood usually ignores.

In films like “Tangerine,” the story of a transgender sex worker that was shot with an iPhone, and “The Florida Project,” a look at an unemployed single mother and her young daughter who live in a rundown motel in the shadow of Walt Disney World, Baker has made a career of dramatizing lives lived on the economic margins. “Red Rocket,” his latest effort, is no different. The offbeat comedy centers on Mikey Saber, a down-and-out adult film star who returns to his small Texas hometown after washing out of the industry. There, he sells weed as a side hustle, while attempting to seduce a 17-year old donut shop worker who he wants to transform into a porn actress. A meet cute, it decidedly is not.

The film debuted to raves at the Cannes Film Festival...

Red Rocket director and co-screenwriter Sean Baker revealed that Mikey Saber, the always-hustling washed-up porn actor who returns to the Texas hometown that wasn’t exactly sorry to see him go, was inspired by real-life adult-film actors he encountered and that he always envisioned as a role for Simon Rex.

“My co-screenwriter, Chris Bergoch and I, we were doing research on a film that we made … called Starlet, which also focused on the adult-film industry,” Baker told Deadline’s Contenders Film: Los Angeles, sharing a panel with the film’s actors Rex, Bree Elrod and Suzanna Son.

“Getting to know people within that industry, we realized there was this archetype, because we met a handful of men like Mikey Saber – and they even had a term applied to them within the industry, slang term: ‘suitcase pimp,’” said Baker, whose most recent indie hit was 2017’s The Florida Project. “We found...

With the musical accompaniment of ‘N Sync’s “Bye Bye Bye,” A24 has released the first trailer for Sean Baker’s “Red Rocket” with Simon Rex.

Shot in secret during the pandemic, the upcoming dramedy is written by Baker and Chris Bergoch. It stars Rex as Mikey Saber, a porn star who returns to his hometown of Texas City, Texas, after his Los Angeles lifestyle leaves him broke. When he arrives home, claiming to be a reformed man, his ex-wife Lexi (Bree Elrod) and mother-in-law Lil (Brenda Deiss) aren’t happy to see him, and things take another turn when a teen girl named Strawberry catches his eye.

Displaying Mikey’s smooth-talking charm in a turquoise tie-dye shirt, the trailer shows him bike-riding to job interviews, getting into verbal spats and claiming to be able to “100% out-cardio” a guy who gut-punches him outside a drive-thru donut shop. “Red Rocket” premiered...

Texas City in Galveston County, Texas, in the summer of 2016. Mikey Saber (Simon Rex)—or Mike Davies, as he’d rather not be called—lopes off a greyhound bus into the broiling heat, covered in facial bruises, his possessions only a stale, dirt-caked sports bag thrown over his shoulder. This is no triumphant Odyssean homecoming, a prodigal son welcomed into the bosom of redemption. He is trouble: all devilishly good-looking male-model cheekbones and taut physique, whose real desire to please induces nothing but suffering to others and himself. This is his latest rodeo.

As a Sean Baker protagonist, he’s actually a slight anomaly, although this is still a very Bakeresque milieu. Whereas his past work threw ingenuous, warm-hearted individuals into hostile worlds (festooned always in bright cinematography and decor), here the first-billed on the cast list is the monster. Or the hero of his own life, and deliverer of others,...

Sean Baker has been making critically acclaimed films for years about people living on the fringes of polite society, some of whom engage in sex work, and some of whom are played by non-actors — most notably 2012’s Starlet, 2015’s Tangerine and my personal favorite, 2017’s The Florida Project — but they have collectively received only a single Oscar nomination, best supporting actor for Florida Project‘s Willem Dafoe. I would expect that to change with his latest work in that vein, the electric Red Rocket, which had its world premiere in competition at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday and has left seemingly ...

Sean Baker has been making critically acclaimed films for years about people living on the fringes of polite society, some of whom engage in sex work, and some of whom are played by non-actors — most notably 2012’s Starlet, 2015’s Tangerine and my personal favorite, 2017’s The Florida Project — but they have collectively received only a single Oscar nomination, best supporting actor for Florida Project‘s Willem Dafoe. I would expect that to change with his latest work in that vein, the electric Red Rocket, which had its world premiere in competition at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday and has left seemingly ...

Red Rocket director Sean Baker is prepared to receive hate mail, he said at a press conference in Cannes on Thursday.

Baker said he’s been the recipient of plenty of angry comments before, so he is philosophical about the impending reaction to Red Rocket‘s open-ended tale of a washed-up porn star in pursuit of a teenager. He’s also confident that A24, the film’s U.S. distributors, will support him.

“A24 is taking it domestically in the United States, and you know they’re a fearless company, and I think they’re going to take anything that comes our way head on,” he said. “But I don’t want to be negative about it. I know we’re tackling tough subjects here, and I know there are themes and images that are triggering in this film, I get it. But again, it’s part of the discussion…...