One thing that has given us genuine hope over the last few years is just how fucking strange Cannes has gotten with its awards. Chalk it up to a more diverse jury, the introduction of a distributor like Neon coming into the picture, or simply from the passage of time, but they’ve had a habit of picking more bangers than not in the last decade. We had Justine Triet win last year, Ruben Ostlund double-up for whatever reason in 2022, and Julia Ducournau win for Titane in 2021 — maybe COVID was the catalyst, but those are interesting movies, which is something that Cannes often has struggled with.
This year, they honored one of our faves by giving Sean Baker, he of Red Rocket, The Florida Project and Tangerine fame by bestowing the Palme D’or on his latest film, Anora, which stars Mikey Madison as a would-be Cinderella getting chased by Russians after marrying an oligarch’s kid.
Baker’s the first American to win the award in over a decade — Terrence Malick won for The Tree of Life all the way back in 2011 — and we are so fucking excited to see what he’s cooked up after teaming up with Simon Rex to make something too good for AMPAS. Neon dropped a trailer for the film earlier on Monday (July 15), and man, it looks dope.
Peep it (and be warned, this is a Redband trailer, so you may not want to watch it in the office):
Here’s a synopsis, straight from the Cannes program:
“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.”
Anora hits theaters on October 18. You can bet cash money that we’ll be there Day One, come hell or high water. If you haven’t seen any of Baker’s films, go out and watch Red Rocket as soon as humanly possible. Seriously.