“Anora,” the winner of the 2024 Palme d’Or, is a film that’s all too easy to describe as a star is born moment. The film, a madcap romance between the wealthy son of a Russian oligarch and a Brighton Beach sex worker that channels everything from the screwball comedies of Ernst Lubitsch to the intimate neo-realist dramas of Federico Fellini features a performance from Mikey Madison in the lead role that feels destined to raise the “Better Things” and “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” star’s profile immediately.
Beyond its leading lady, “Anora” also feels like it’s destined to be the moment where its director Sean Baker goes from indie darling to award darling. Baker, who made his directorial debut in the year 2000 with the obscure “Four Letter Words,” has slowly risen in stature for years now. After three more features — “Take Out,” “Prince of Broadway,” and “Starlet” — came out to relatively little notice, a streak of movies starting with 2015 Christmas Eve comedy “Tangerine” — that also includes Disney World drama “The Florida Project” and toxic character study “Red Rocket” — turned him into one of the more acclaimed directors currently working today.
“Anora,” as his funniest and perhaps most accessible film yet, promises to raise his stature further. While Baker’s previous efforts might have their places on online best of the year or best of the decade lists, they didn’t make much impact at the Oscars, where his rugged naturalism and modest independent lens proved insufficiently flashy; the sole nomination any of his films managed to get was a Best Supporting Actor nod for Willem Dafoe in “The Florida Project,” easily the most famous actor Baker has ever worked with.
This year though, after some expansions to Academy ranks that have made the awards body far more adventurous? “Anora” isn’t just expected to contend for the Oscar, it’s arguably the frontrunner, and Baker himself seems likely to get the recognition he deserves from the directing branch come nomination morning. It’s both thrilling and somewhat disorienting, given how Baker has devoted his career to making films about the type of people who are, pretty much, the exact opposites of your stereotypical Oscar attendee.
A white man who was born and raised in Upper Middle Class New Jersey and attended New York University film school, Baker isn’t quite the obvious type to — as critics have often defined his work — spotlight those in the margins of America. But at the core of his filmmaking is a fascination for how those in the lowest strata of America’s capitalist structure operate underneath the crushing weight of economic uncertainty. While his early films like “Take Out” channeled these concerns through the stories of gig workers, his recent string of chamber dramas look at the lives of people in the most stigmatized American profession, sex work. Every film he’s made since “Tangerine” touches on the topic, and Baker’s skill as a storyteller lies in his ability to portray those who make their living in sex work not as symbols or two-bit stereotypes, but as vividly rendered, heartbreakingly real human beings.
With “Anora” in theaters now and Baker serving as the keynote speaker at our Future of Filmmaking event on November 2, IndieWire is taking a look at the director’s filmography to determine which of his diamonds-in-the-rough shines the brightest. Read on for all eight of Sean Baker’s films, ranked from worst to best.
8. ‘Four Letter Words’ (2000)
Ultra, ultra low-budget even by the not particularly high standards of Baker’s latter efforts, the impossible-to-track-down ‘Four Letter Words’ is the stereotypical first film in pretty much every conceivable way. There are kernels of Baker’s brilliance in this low-stakes hangout film about a bunch of former high school classmates reuniting for a keg party; you can sense his sharp observational filmmaking and knack for comedy in how he flits from conversation to conversation at the party, portraying the listlessness of these young suburban men. On the whole, though, it’s just a wholly insubstantial watch, one where you can feel the director still learning the ropes behind the scenes. It’s more a Kevin Smith homage than a real Sean Baker film.
7. ‘Prince of Broadway’ (2008)
Another difficult-to-find early film from Baker, ‘Prince of Broadway’ is about 100 times more fully formed than ‘Four Letter Words,’ though it’s still not nearly as piercing as his post-‘Tangerine’ output. Still, it’s well worth tracking down. A story of a fuckup turned father that feels like an edgier ‘Big Daddy,’ ‘Prince of Broadway’ stars a terrific Prince Adu as Lucky, a sharp and charismatic hustler and undocumented Ghanan immigrant who eeks out a living working at a knockoff designer store. When an ex-girlfriend drops an 18-month-old baby at his doorstep, Lucky is both excited and reluctant to take care of the baby. What makes ‘Prince of Broadway’ effective is that Baker doesn’t rest on easy clichés about children changing you; there’s always a little danger that Lucky isn’t up to the task of shepherding this young man through childhood, and that unpredictability gives real tension and bite that powers the scrappy, heavily improvised little indie.
6. ‘Starlet’ (2012)
Before he really broke out with ‘Tangerine,’ Baker received positive reviews for ‘Starlet,’ an unconventional buddy film about the intergenerational friendship between two women. Jane (Dree Hemingway), or Tess as a few people call her, is a 21-year-old living an aimless life with a Chihuahua named Starlet and two roommates in the San Fernando Valley. Sadie (Besedka Johnson) is a much older woman who Jane unexpectedly befriends after finding cash in a Thermos sold to her at a garage sale, and grows more attached to than she’s ever been to anyone in her life. Enigmatic and more difficult to parse than Baker’s other films, ‘Starlet’ is nonetheless a rewarding story of finding someone that makes you feel seen, bolstered by terrific performances from its two leads.
5. ‘Red Rocket’ (2021)
The average Sean Baker protagonist is someone who is, fundamentally, decent. Sure, Ani from ‘Anora’ has a foul mouth and a less-than-reputable job, but the empathy the film has for her is contagious. ‘Red Rocket’ takes a different track, luxuriating in the company of a man who, as the audience quickly comes to realize, is toxic to his core. Simon Rex, whose brash and vicious performance is both off-putting and undeniably magnetic, is Mikey Saber, a failed porn star who returns to his hometown of Texas City to leach off his estranged wife while plotting a showbiz comeback that he’ll brag about to anyone with his massive mouth. There’s a lot in ‘Red Rocket’ that’s queasy to watch, as Mikey’s innate selfishness reveals itself time and time again, most prominently in a manipulative relationship with the teenager Strawberry (a lovable Suzanna Son). The film is just as funny, well-made, and thought-provoking as Baker’s other works, but by design it’s bleaker and more sour, with a cynical look at a certain delusion that powers many an ill-conceived Hollywood dream.
4. ‘Take Out’ (2004)
The only film that Baker co-directed, ‘Take Out’ is a collaborative effort with Shih-Ching Tsou, who would go on to produce and make cameos in ‘Tangerine,’ ‘The Florida Project,’ and ‘Red Rocket.’ The extra perspective helps the film, which uses an almost documentary-like approach to its story, stand out as a particularly riveting entry in his filmography, and one of his most distinct. Unfolding in a rainy, depressing Manhattan, ‘Take Out’ immerses the audience in the life of Ming Ding (Charles Jang), a restaurant deliveryman and undocumented immigrant who has one day to make enough in tips to pay back a loan shark or risk dire consequences. That proves easier said than done when many of the people he services barely see him as human. The result is a propulsive thriller that’s nerve-wracking and fraught, and subtly touching in how it reframes New York from the perspective of those too often overlooked within the city.
3. ‘Tangerine’ (2015)
‘Tangerine’ got a lot of attention when it came out due to the much-publicized fact that it was shot on three iPhones (something like that was still fairly novel in 2015). Baker’s low-fi approach certainly fits the day-in-the-life story like a glove, but now it feels secondary to how deeply funny and touching this unconventional Christmas comedy is. Mya Taylor and Kitana Kiki Rodriquez give lived-in, sweetly natural performances as two trans sex workers who go on a revenge tour through Los Angeles clubs and parties after one of their boyfriends/pimps gets with another woman. Baker and his two leads provide the duo’s dynamic with plenty of shared history and inner tension, even as it’s obvious how ride-or-die the pair is in the long run. Funny and raucous, ‘Tangerine’ is a pitch-perfect 90 minutes of the same manic comedy that Baker would refine in ‘Anora,’ and the only bitterness to it is the fact that our adventures with the movie’s leads have to come to an end.
2. ‘Anora’ (2024)
Class and capitalism have been the main characters of Baker’s career; every one of his movies operates in the inherent anxiety experienced by those at the very bottom of the economic ladder. What makes ‘Anora’ so interesting is that it’s the first time Baker really gives a face to those at the top: first as the dashing prince in a fairy tale romance, then as the villains who degrade and destroy the hero’s life. It makes for a film that’s both more conventional than Baker’s other more cinema-verite-esque creations and far more emotionally engaging, in part because of how dazzling Mikey Madison is as the young stripper Ani.
Blunt and scrappy, Ani (or ‘Anora,’ as very few people call her) is immediately likable and compelling: we root for her to find happiness with the obviously inferior to her scion of a Russian oligarch (Mark Eydelshteyn, hilariously embodying brain-dead fuckbois everywhere), and then root for her to survive against his contemptuous family determined to annul the young kids’ marriage. Baker, always sharp with his choices, feels more confident than ever behind the camera, alternating between manic screwball comedy and devastating quiet romantic tragedy without ever losing momentum, and cannily deploying world-class needle drops like a knockout opening Take That track. He makes Ani’s rise to riches and quick fall an exhilarating cinematic experience, one that’s much like the woman it’s named after: flinty and funny and tough and pure gold underneath it all.
1. ‘The Florida Project’ (2017)
It’s a subtly impossible task to make a film from a children’s perspective. Far too many directors prove incapable of fully immersing themselves in the worldview of someone so young and so removed from themselves — the story feels less like it’s being told through the kid’s eyes than it feels stooped down to their level, constrained and hemmed in by their protagonists. This makes what Baker accomplishes in ‘The Florida Project’ all the more astonishing.
A staggering slice of life that feels effortlessly real, the director’s masterpiece about the lives of permanent residents at a motel located on the outskirts of Disney World tells its crushing story of economic uncertainty through the viewpoint of Brooklyn Prince’s six-year-old girl Moonee, and never feels cloying or exploitative because of it. That’s a testament to Baker’s direction, which sketches out this surreal transitional space Moonee and her loving mother Halley (Bria Vinaite) have found themselves in with sharp and evocative world-building, and Prince’s performance, which is devastatingly natural and never cutesy. ‘The Florida Project’ feels both small and epic, telling the story of people overlooked and unseen with deep emotion and care that’s palpable and overwhelming. Maybe that’s why Baker suddenly changes his lens at the end for a fantastical closing scene that cuts like a knife precisely because we know it’s not truthful; he, like the audience, can’t bear to think about the pain that will come for his characters after the camera stops rolling.
