Sean Baker‘s Cannes Palme d’Or winner Anora will open this year’s Stockholm Film Festival, organizers said Tuesday.
Scream and Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood actress Mikey Madison stars as the titular character in the screwball dramedy, playing a sex worker in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, who gets mixed up with the son of a Russian oligarch.
Anora premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, where it took the top prize for best film. Baker has been touring the festival circuit with the feature, screening Anora at Telluride, Toronto and the San Sebastián film festivals.
The Hollywood Reporter‘s festival review praised Madison’s performance, saying she plays Anora “with a sweetness that humanizes even the most transactional situations and a defensiveness that makes her dangerous when threatened.”
Anora‘s next stop will be Sweden, where the film will kick off the 2024 Stockholm Film Festival on Nov. 6. The 34th annual Stockholm festival runs Nov. 6-17.
Baker is a regular at Stockholm, having screened his 2015 breakthrough Tangerine and 2017 feature The Florida Project at the festival. In a statement, the Stockholm festival noted the connection between those features and Anora: They all “examine marginalized groups in general and the everyday life of sex workers in particular. With his eighth feature film, the indie humanist and filmmaker Sean Baker proves that he is one of the most skilled contemporary portrayers of the modern working class in the United States.”
Neon has Anora for the U.S. and is planning an Oct. 18 release.
