“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” and “Scream” breakout Mikey Madison is heading to the Strip…in Las Vegas, that is.
Madison leads Sean Baker‘s “Anora,” which has been deemed an Oscar frontrunner with Madison as an actress to watch this awards season. Madison plays an exotic dancer and sex worker who marries the son of a Russian oligarch (Mark Eydelshteyn). Vache Tovmaysa, Yura Borisov, and Baker’s frequent collaborator Karren Karagulian also star.
Baker will be the keynote speaker at IndieWire’s Future of Filmmaking Summit.
“Anora” won the Palme d’Or at Cannes 2024, and was the first American film to win since Terrence Malick’s “Tree of Life” in 2011. “Anora” will be released by Neon, which handled the distribution of fellow Palme d’Or winners “Parasite,” “Triangle of Sadness,” and “Anatomy of a Fall,” which all went on to be Oscar-nominated. “Parasite” and “Anatomy of a Fall” both won Oscars.
Writer/director Baker previously helmed Oscar-nominated film “The Florida Project,” groundbreaking iPhone movie “Tangerine,” and Simon Rex’s career-best “Red Rocket,” which also centered on sex work.
Baker told IndieWire while at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival that he didn’t realize how “Anora” paralleled iconic sex worker film “Pretty Woman” until he was in production.
“There are definitely similarities between this film and ‘Pretty Woman,’” Baker said. “Honestly, I didn’t even pick up on that until halfway through production and somebody called it out and I was like, ‘Oh, OK. Yeah, I see that.’ But I didn’t want it in any way to affect me I didn’t want to be influenced by it. So I decided to not revisit it and to tell you the truth, I still haven’t revisited it, so I haven’t seen it since 1990. I’m going to wait, let all the dust settle from ‘Anora,’ and then I’ll rent it next, whenever.”
Madison also reflected on her transformation for the role while at the festival.
“I trained for months even just to do a quick 20-second scene on a pole, because I really wanted her to seem like a very seasoned dancer that had been dancing for at least a couple of years,” she told IndieWire. “And then I learned Russian. It was a lot of preparation, but I loved it.”
Madison added that in addition to “Pretty Woman,” “Anora” harks back to other features that were curated by Baker.
“I feel like, he sent me some inspirations, like some sexpoitation films from the seventies, some Italian films, foreign films, some French as well,” she said. “I think we pulled inspiration from that, but I really [wanted] her [to be] like a completely new character.”
“Anora” premieres October 18 in theaters. Check out the new trailer below and read the full IndieWire review here.
