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Sean Baker, director of Cannes’ Palme d’Or winner Anora, discussed the success of his latest movie at a San Sebastian Film Festival event Saturday, admitting that he won’t be using the momentum to take on big-budget studio films like Marvel’s.
Baker spoke to a packed crowd about his film — now receiving Oscar buzz — which follows Anora (Mikey Madison), a young sex worker from Brooklyn, who gets her chance at a Cinderella story when she meets and impulsively marries the son of an oligarch (Mark Eydelshteyn). But the fairytale is threatened when her fiancé’s parents set out to get the marriage annulled. The story has drawn comparisons to the Julia Roberts standby Pretty Woman.
Baker’s follow-up to Red Rocket, Anora earned high praise from critics out of Cannes. The movie is getting a whole host of air time ahead of the awards season, debuting in Cannes before screening at Venice, TIFF, and now San Sebastian.
“It was my dream come true, so very overwhelming in the moment,” Baker said of his Palme d’Or award, which he accepted from Star Wars creator George Lucas. “I think because this happened now in my career, where I’m secure in the films that I’m making and happy with the films that I’m able to make, this just basically allows me to continue making the movies I want to make the way I want to make them.”
When asked about the kinds of doors that becoming a Palme d’Or winner opens in the film industry, Baker vowed to stick to movies about working class, lesser-known stories. “Essentially, I’m not looking for it to get me a Marvel film,” he said. “I’m not looking for it to open doors with studios, that’s never been and is certainly not my intention now.”
The American filmmaker said particularly in the U.S., it’s difficult to get “these sort of movies” made. “What I’m referring to are like films with challenging subject matter.” But it’s also about casting — Baker admits to doing casting his own films so he has “total control” — but he doesn’t think about A-listers in the process. “First and foremost, I always think about who is right for the character.”
Baker spoke about not siding with a single political view in his films out of caution that he would alienate a particular audience. He said: “You’re using film, hopefully, to spark discussion amongst people who perhaps have opposing views or different views. If I’m preaching, it’s really just alienating everybody who doesn’t agree with that ideology… If I am going to have politics in my film, they have to be buried. They have to be subversive.”
He called the political landscape in his native U.S. “extremely partisan”. “I’ve had the extremes liking my film, Democracy Now! liked it, so did Ben Shapiro,” he said. So it was crazy. It was good. I actually said, ‘Okay, we’re on to something. We’re doing something.’”
Baker wrote, directed, and edited Anora himself. He said he wished he could give himself more credit for his editing, but “ridiculously” his own union doesn’t allow himself to have “edited, written, and directed by Sean Baker” in his film’s opening title sequences. “Really, you’re finding the film in the edit.”
Mikey Madison in ‘Anora’.
Cannes Film Festival
But what prompted audience laughter was when he discussed getting carried away with soundtrack decisions before approval is sought, and even revealed he finds himself “falling in love” with sequences to a certain song only to be denied the rights to use it. “How could I not have ‘Gucci Flip Flops’ in my movie?” he said, “But they wanted too much money. [Laughs.] And what we came up with, I actually liked more.”
Reads THR‘s Anora review, “As a character, played by Mikey Madison with a sweetness that humanizes even the most transactional situations and a defensiveness that makes her dangerous when threatened, Anora, who goes by Ani, stands alongside the defiantly resilient protagonists of Baker’s last handful of films, from Starlet and Tangerine through The Florida Project and Red Rocket.”
Anora will be released in theaters on October 18 via Neon. The San Sebastian Film Festival, which kicked off with the world premiere of erotic feature Emmanuelle Friday night, runs from Sept. 20-28.
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