By Jake Coyle
“Anora,” a strip club Cinderella story without the fairy tale ending, was crowned best picture at the 97th Academy Awards, handing Sean Baker’s gritty, Brooklyn-set screwball farce Hollywood’s top prize.
In a stubbornly fluctuating Oscar season, “Anora,” the Palme d’Or-winner at the Cannes Film Festival, emerged as the unlikely frontrunner. Baker’s tale of an erotic dancer who elopes with the son of a Russian oligarch — unusually explicit for a best-picture winner — was made for just $6 million but went home with five big awards, including four for its scrappy indie director.
But Oscar voters, eschewing blockbuster contenders like “Wicked” and “Dune: Part Two,” instead added “Anora” — which has one of the lowest box-office totals ever for a best picture winner with $16 million in ticket sales — to a string of recent indie best picture winners, including “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” “CODA” and “Nomadland.”
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