Sean Baker won the Palme d’Or at Cannes with this enthralling drama, featuring a star-making performance from Mikey Madison.

In his new film, Sean Baker (Tangerine, Florida Project) presents a modern-day Cinderella story about Ani, a young sex worker from Brooklyn, meeting Vanya, a spoiled son of a Russian oligarch, who offers her a glamorous new life of possibility and incredible wealth. Ani’s wild ride and fairytale is soon threatened when news of their whirlwind marriage gets back to Russia, resulting in Vanya’s parents flying to New York to manage the situation. Both wildly entertaining and heartbreaking, Anora takes audiences on a freewheeling, rambunctious adventure that escalates to dizzying levels. Drawing comparisons to Pretty Woman, it constantly plays with genre and audience expectations. But what shines through most, as it does in all of his films, is Baker’s love for and unwillingness to judge his characters.

ANORA is boundlessly alive with a quality we’ve seen continually in the movies of Baker, among the most humanist filmmakers working today. There is joy next to sadness. There is comedy inside a tragedy. - RogerEbert.com