A strip-club fairy tale with a generous heart

THERE ARE FEW FILMMAKERS AS OPENHEARTED, as stone-soup inventive, as Sean Baker.

- STEPHANIE ZACHAREK

In movies like Tangerine and The Florida Project, he’s shown a knack for doing a lot with a little. And he makes us feel like insiders even in worlds that may be unfamiliar to us. Anora, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes this year, invites us into the life of a young sex worker from Brooklyn named Ani—she doesn’t like her full name, which is the same as the movie’s title, though by the end, it’s the only name regal enough to suit her tender, fighting spirit.

Ani, played by Mikey Madison (perhaps best known as Max Fox on