Sean Baker’s “Anora” has won the Palme d’Or at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, a jury headed by Greta Gerwig announced on Saturday.
The win for Baker’s freewheeling film about a stripper and the son of a Russian oligarch becomes the fifth consecutive Palme winner to be distributed by Neon, which previously handled “Anatomy of a Fall,” “The Triangle of Sadness,” “Titane” and “Parasite.”
TheWrap’s review said of the film, “It’s one of the most entertaining movies to play in Cannes this year, and also one of the most confounding: part character study of the title character (Mikey Madison), a sex worker from Brighton Beach who falls for rich Russian playboy Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn); part look into the world of the super-rich, an arena Baker has studiously avoided in films like ‘Tangerine,’ ‘The Florida Project’ and ‘Red Rocket’; part escalating nightmare comedy reminiscent of ’80s gems like ‘After Hours’ and ‘Married to the Mob.’