An Uncut Gem.
Cinderella didn’t know that prince too long, either.
— Jesse Hassenger (Paste Magazine)
Often the music slips from diegetic to non-diegetic and back again, meaning the music belongs to their world and to ours; we’re coaxed into the story, part of it. There are wardrobe choices, too: Ani, for instance, becomes progressively more clothed as her character gradually becomes more vulnerable.
— Alissa Wilkinson (The New York Times)
[Anora] dislikes her name and insists on going by Ani instead. This makes the film’s title both a gentle rebuke and an affirmation – and this is hardly the first time that Baker has displayed an uncanny knack for loving even those aspects of his characters that they cannot love about themselves.[…]
In the first half of Anora, we liked Ani a lot. In the second half, we grow to love her unconditionally, like Baker does.
— Jessica Kiang (Sight & Sound, November 2024)
Synopsis: Anora, a young sex worker from Brooklyn, gets her chance at a Cinderella story when she meets and impulsively marries the son of an oligarch. Once the news reaches Russia, her fairytale is threatened as the parents set out for New York to get the marriage annulled.