Anora (2024) on Netflix
Ani, a stripper in Brighton Beach, is introduced to Ivan, the son of a Russian oligarch. He pays her to be his girlfriend for a week, and they marry in Las Vegas.
- Netflix4.2/5
- IMDb7.4/10307,618 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes93%
Trailer
Plot summary
Ani Mikheeva works as a lap dancer in Brighton Beach, in Brooklyn. Her boss brings her to Ivan Zakharov, twenty-one, whose father is the oligarch Nikolai Zakharov. Vanya, as he is called, is in the United States to study, and spends his time partying, drinking and playing video games in his parents' mansion. He pays Ani for sex, then offers her fifteen thousand dollars to be his girlfriend for a week. The week brings a trip to Las Vegas, where he proposes and they wed. When the news reaches Russia, his mother Galina sends Toros to arrange an annulment.
Cast
Show all 15 cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Anora (2024)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Sean Baker edited Anora himself in Adobe Premiere Pro and told Josh Safdie that he cut the film while high.
- Sean Baker cast Mikey Madison after seeing her in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Scream, and hired her without an audition.
- At Cannes, Mikey Madison said director Sean Baker and producer Samantha Quan, Baker's wife, acted out sex positions to demonstrate what they wanted. Madison turned down an offered intimacy coordinator, saying she was most comfortable with the pair after a year together.
- Sean Baker said the film was inspired by a friend's story about a Russian-American newlywed kidnapped for collateral, and by his own work in 2000 and 2001 editing wedding videos, including ones of Russian-Americans in New York.
- The Zakharov mansion was filmed at 2458 National Drive, a Mill Basin mansion once owned by Vasily Anisimov, an oligarch with ties to Russia. Baker had searched on Google for "the biggest and best mansion in Brighton Beach".
- Anora won five Oscars including Best Picture, becoming the fourth film, after The Lost Weekend, Marty and Parasite, to win both that and the top prize at Cannes. Baker equalled Walt Disney's record for the most Academy Awards won by a person in one year and is the only person to win all four for the same film.
- It was the fifth consecutive Palme d'Or winner distributed by Neon in the United States, and the first American-produced film to take the Palme d'Or since Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life in 2011.
