You aren't wrong: 'Anora' is suddenly inescapable

As the Oscars inch ever closer, one film has emerged as the one to beat: Anora. It hasn’t been a straightforward journey for the film, though.

Anora follows a stripper named Ani who falls for the son of a Russian oligarch who comes to her club one night. They get married, much to the chagrin of his wealthy parents, bringing into question the authenticity of Ani’s Cinderella story.

After winning the Palm d’Or, the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, in May 2024, Anora was the first true frontrunner of awards season. Though the trophy typically makes the film a contender at the Academy Awards, winners rarely ever take home Best Picture at the Oscars nearly 10 months later. Only three have ever done so: The Lost Weekend (1945), Marty (1955) and Parasite (2019).

Anora writer-director Sean Baker is best known for creating scrappy, low-budget independent films about people on the fringes of society — from retired porn stars slinking back to their hometowns (Red Rocket, 2021) to trans sex workers investigating a cheating pimp (Tangerine, 2015). For Anora, he cast little-known actors that he handpicked from their unusual auditions or underrated work in other films, crafting his screenplays around them.

Baker has filmed movies entirely on iPhones and with minimal budgets for decades, but his resource pool has increased lately. He told Yahoo Entertainment in October that the Palm d’Or win immediately changed his life. Anora became his own Cinderella story.

“There’s not any resistance. All resistance [has been] removed,” Baker said. “I can actually continue to make the types of movies I want to make the way I want to make them.”

Anora remained part of awards conversations leading into the Golden Globes, where it was nominated for five, but completely shut out. After doing surprisingly well at the box office — $38.1 million worldwide on a $6 million budget — it seemed the fairy tale might be ending. Its six Oscar nominations were nice, but the film lost momentum compared to competitors like Emilia Pérez and The Brutalist.

But then Anora’s competitors unexpectedly began falling apart. Awards season villain Emilia Pérez endured massive fallout when controversial X posts from lead actress Karla Sofía Gascón surfaced. The Brutalist failed to pick up crucial nominations, and the low-budget behemoth suffered from critiques about its use of AI. Both have a high barrier to entry for curious viewers and voters — Emilia Pérez is an offbeat Spanish-language musical, and The Brutalist is a sprawling three hours and 35 minutes long.

When it seemed all hope had been lost for Anora, it won the top prize at three of the major Best Picture precursors — the Critics Choice Awards, PGA Awards and DGA Awards — all in one weekend between Feb. 7 and 8. It was once again the frontrunner for Best Picture. Since the founding of both guilds, only six movies in academy history have lost Best Picture after securing both PGA and DGA feature awards.

Though it was shut out by the Golden Globes at the beginning of awards season and by the SAG Awards at the end, Anora has now become unavoidable. Its distributor, Neon, has tracked its rise and ubiquity through Instagram posts, honoring every small-but-mighty win at the WGA Awards and Film Independent Spirit Awards.

One phrase frequently comes up in the film's marketing materials, including a not-so-subtle For Your Consideration billboard: Follow your heart.

Since that fateful weekend, star Mikey Madison appeared on The Drew Barrymore Show and covered W magazine, and her co-star Mark Eydelshteyn was a Cosmopolitan centerfold. “Anora” was the answer to a New York Times Crossword clue. The film’s screenplay was given out for free at independent bookstores. Anora is everywhere.

In Baker’s many acceptance speeches, he has called for longer theatrical runs for films — a popular talking point among cinephiles hoping to have new life injected into the cinematic experience as streaming services continue to generate massive amounts of views.

Though it might not drive as many viewers to the theater as blockbuster Best Picture nominees like Dune: Part Two and Wicked, Anora is still fascinating filmgoers. According to Google data shared with Yahoo Entertainment, Anora was the No. 1 most-searched Best Picture nominee in February. It’s the No. 3 most-searched on Yahoo, contributing to its No. 1 spot overall on our Best Picture Leaderboard.

It’s been a chaotic awards season, and critics agree that Anora would be a meaningful choice to win Best Picture. Maybe it's exactly the kind of twisted Cinderella story the academy is craving right now.