Last night’s Oscars were dominated by Anora, marking it out officially as the best film of the year. Last May, it received a Palme d’Or and last night it picked up five Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Film Editing, and Best Original Screenplay. Anora did so well it broke records, with director Sean Baker tying Walt Disney with the most Academy Award wins by a single person in one night. This clean up wasn’t a complete surprise, as the film has become a critics’ darling, but it is contentious. Mainly because of its representation of sex work, which is - depending on who you ask - empowering and brilliant, or shallow and dangerous.
Anora follows Anora AKA Ani, played by Mikey Madison, a New York sex worker that marries a Russian oligarch’s son (Ivan "Vanya" Zakharov, played by Mark Eydelshteyn). What starts off feeling like a chaotic, rom-com fever dream quickly spirals into something way messier (and way more dangerous) as her new in-laws get involved, who chase, gag and tie Ani up before forcing her to help them arrange an annulment.
In her Oscars acceptance speech, 25-year-old Madison said: 'This is very surreal. I grew up in Los Angeles but Hollywood always felt so far away from me, so to be here standing in this room today is really incredible.' She added: 'I want to honour and recognise the sex worker community. I will continue to support and be an ally... the women I've had the privilege of meeting from that community has been one of the highlights of this entire incredible experience.'
This is not Sean Baker’s first film to centre around sex work and class, he’s explored similar themes in Tangerine (2015) and The Florida Project (2017). Sean Baker has addressed the skepticism around why he, a ‘a cis, white, straight, prep-school-educated filmmaker’ (as one journalist has put it) would be the person to tackle such subjects, saying: 'My films are often just reactions to what I’m not seeing enough of in film and TV or what I want to see more of. I’m not the first to have an empathetic approach to sex work - definitely, not the first - but I don’t see a lot of it, and it’s few and far between.'
Anora got into more hot water last year when Madison revealed that she declined the filmmakers’ offer to hire an intimacy coordinator. It was her choice, she said, which she made because 'we decided that it would be best just to keep it small. We were able to streamline it, shoot it super quickly.'
The film has many graphic sex scenes, which sparked outrage that no intimacy coordinator was used. With many people, myself included, believing that intimacy coordinators should not be a suggestion in films featuring sex, but a requirement.
Many people in the sex work community have spoken out against Anora, even those who were consulted for the film. For example, former escort Andrea Werhun (who acted as a consultant) told the Daily Mail that she was 're-traumatised' by the violent scenes, and said she raised her concerns with Baker but they were ignored. 'I would have preferred to see less violence against Ani. As a sex worker, I feel like we've seen enough violence against sex workers on screen…There are parts of the movie that feel very authentic, but when there is so much violence, it feels that a sex worker wouldn't have made a film like this.'
In Angel Food Magazine, Marla Cruz writes 'Memories of my 4-year stint working the strip club in 6-inch heels and string bikinis come flooding back. By her third lap dance on screen, I am already exhausted and impatient to be relieved from the tedium of a graveyard shift peopled by goofy, predictable club customers.' Adding that 'the tone of its general reception by a non-industry audience suggests that maybe I would have to abandon all my past experiences in the sex industry in order to enjoy this movie.'
Not everyone in the sex worker community was against Anora. Escort Ivy Quinn spoke to Grazia and told us: 'I was really heartened to see Mikey Madison thanking the sex worker community unashamedly, in a country like the US where the majority of sex work is not only illegal, it is criminalised, that really means a lot.'
Quinn believes that stories like Anora humanise sex workers: 'Because we are complete people with rich, complex lives in and out of our industry, can only be seen as a win. I truly believe the more our profession is demystified and humanised, the closer we will get to our goal of full decriminalisation, that would afford us labour rights, and safe and favourable working conditions.'
Grazia spoke to Erika Lust, a screenplay writer, director, producer and author of adult entertainment, whose work makes pornography with women’s pleasure at the centre. She said: 'Anora is a rare film that refuses to reduce sex work to tired tropes of victimisation or glamorisation. Sean Baker’s storytelling does something far more radical - it treats sex workers as full, complex human beings. Ani isn’t a plot device; she’s a woman with agency, humour, and contradictions. That kind of representation matters because it moves beyond stereotypes and allows sex workers to be seen as they are - multifaceted individuals, not just symbols of struggle or morality tales.'
Lust believes that Sean Baker has a gift for telling stories about ‘overlooked communities’ with ‘nuance and empathy.’ 'From Tangerine to Red Rocket, he’s shown us the lives of marginalised individuals with humour, vulnerability, and honesty. With Anora, he continues this tradition, placing a sex worker at the heart of the story, not as an archetype, but as a person.' She added that: 'Baker gives us a humanising portrait of Ani, but the film only scratches the surface of the deeper structural inequalities that shape how sex workers experience autonomy and agency.'
I can see both sides clearly, but ultimately I am not a sex worker and therefore the film meant something very different for me; it was funny in places, tense and enjoyable. I did not find it groundbreaking in its representation, or complex in its characterisation, and that’s potentially the issue. Sean Baker and co are claiming too much and doing too little. Yes, they consulted sex workers for the film, but they seemingly didn’t take all their advice on, and didn’t do the necessary work of having an intimacy coordinator. Baker dedicated Anora to 'all sex workers past, present and future' in his acceptance speech when it won the Palme d'Or, and made a similar statement last night. Whilst this dedication is important, it feels hollow. This is, ultimately, not a film for sex workers, it’s a film about sex workers.
Chloe Laws is a London-based freelance journalist and poet, who specialises in gender equality, beauty, and culture. In 2022, she won a BSME award for her use of social media in journalism.