The film by US director Sean Baker beat the 21 other films in the competition lineup, including entries by established directors like Francis Ford Coppola and David Cronenberg. He dedicated the film to all sex workers. Madison plays the character of the title, who meets Vanya, the immature son of a Russian oligarch with seemingly unlimited money, while working at a strip club.
Vanya, played by Mark Eydelshteyn, hires Anora to be his girlfriend for a week, deciding on a whim to take his private plane to party in Las Vegas, where they get married. That decision upsets his disapproving parents so much that they jet over from Russia to ensure he gets an annulment. It wowed critics with its poetic monsoon-set portrayal of two women who have migrated to Mumbai to work as nurses.
Its director Mohammad Rasoulof, 51, fled Iran to avoid a lengthy prison sentence just before the festival. The 77th edition of the festival on the French Riviera, which began on May 14, saw several highly charged feminist and political movies. A trans woman won best actress for the first time, as Karla Sofia Gascon took the award for the audacious musical Emilia Perez, in which she plays a Mexican narco boss who has a sex change.
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