By Damon Wise , Antonia Blyth. Such is the indomitable spirit of L. The city, and the very nature of its artistic industry, has always been about resurgence and resilience. As she works her job in a strip club and then spontaneously marries a rich, young Russian client, she remains self-possessed. Watch on Deadline. Back in , Sean Baker hit his stride with Prince of Broadway , the story of an illegal Ghanaian street vendor in downtown New York whose hustling ways are compromised when he is presented with a toddler, the son he never knew he had.
Starlet , about an aspiring porn actress followed in , then, in , came Tangerine , a milestone film shot on iPhones that followed two transgender sex workers who set out to get revenge on a cheating boyfriend. Baker had been hoping to move up a league, like so many of his indie peers, but that extra cash injection was just not forthcoming. So, instead, in , he made Red Rocket , a companion piece to Starlet , about a washed-up porn actor returning home to Texas. I thought Tangerine would open doors.
I thought The Florida Project especially. Red Rocket debuted in Cannes that year, in Competition, which then paved the way for his latest film, Anora.
Anora came to him installments. You always are. There are a number of ideas you have sitting on the back burner, and you have to decide just which one to bring to the front burner. I was with my producer, Alex Coco, who happened to produce that fashion film. The germ of the actual story came around that same time. So that was this idea that I really found fascinating.
So, I think the eureka moment was when I was thinking, well, what is the equivalent of marrying into the mob? Oh, marrying into money. And then what if this girl marries the son of a Russian oligarch? And at that point, it became our little elevator pitch.
