Oscars 2025: “Hollywood has always looked at sex workers with prejudice”, favorite Sean Baker in a long interview

Sean Baker could win the Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director for “Anora” next Sunday. We spoke to the filmmaker about a filmography that revolves around sex workers and reaches the margins of American society.

Interview originally published on October 14, 2024

Sean Baker’s new film is called “Anora,” and that’s the name of the protagonist, who everyone calls Ani (Mikey Madison, fabulous), a New York stripper at a club for select clientele. One night, 21-year-old Ivan (Mark Eidelshtein), with the face and body of a boy, falls head over heels for the dancer, two years older, who takes him to the private booth. Ivan is spending a season partying during a lonely winter in Brooklyn. He’s the only son of a Russian oligarch who doesn’t know what to do with his money. He invites Ani to visit him at his house — which is a real gem. On New Year’s Eve, he hires her services for a whole week. Sex, drugs, non-stop partying... Until he takes her to Las Vegas and they get married, just because, because they feel like it — the soup is spilled. But this isn’t the case of the smart-alecky girl cheating on the lucky beardless guy. Nothing like that. Of course, she is much more mature than he is, but the characters are like two children in a fairy tale. Or a “Pretty Woman” fantasy turned inside out. In this, a trio of “stooges”, led by a jack-of-all-trades Armenian priest (Toros/Karren Karagulian), enter the game with incredible comedic potential to save the “boy” — the men are servants of the oligarch parents from Moscow, who in the meantime are on their way to America to break up the wedding and rescue the heir (the film was set before the Ukrainian War, which the film never mentions). In this incredible trio we also meet the flashy Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan) and the introverted Igor (Yuri “Yura” Borisov, actor in “Compartment No. 6”), who will play a crucial role in the outcome. Ani, who in the blink of an eye achieved all her dreams and is about to go back to square one, fights for her rights. The comedy is set — is it really a comedy?