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"How Does Anora Depart from Sean Baker’s Neo-Realist Independent Film Conventions to Achieve Mainstream Accessibility While Portraying Marginalized Voices?"

When discussing 21st-century American independent cinema, Sean Baker, would probably be one of the newest filmmakers that comes to mind. If you keep up with the Academy Awards, you’d probably recognize his name through the 2025 Best Picture, Anora (Baker, 2024). However, long before this triumph, Baker had already established himself as a distinctive voice in indie filmmaking, known for his compassionate portrayals of marginalized Americans. His sophistication in filming his subject matter interweaves the aesthetics and techniques of Italian Neo-Realism, a genre originally from the 1940s. Eventually, his Neo-Realist filmmaking style has become popularly discussed within film communities since his release of Tangerine (2015), which is famously shot with an iPhone. His partnership with the stylish branding of independent studio, A24, for The Florida Project (2017), further cemented his reputation, and now, with Anora (distributed by Neon), Baker has reached new heights of mainstream recognition.

Anora has achieved rare critical and commercial success as an American Neo-Realist independent film, triumphing major awards with critics hailing it as "an independent film classic just in time for awards season" (Thompson, 2024), while also grossing $57.2 million in the box office against a modest $6 million budget (Box Office Mojo, n.d.; Golden Globes, n.d.). This financial triumph signals that a Neo-Realist film, traditionally niche, has penetrated mainstream audiences.

While many critics and cinephiles now label Baker as an auteur — and some even mistakenly consider him to be the pioneer of American Neo-Realism (Miller, 2022) — Anora marks a deliberate shift toward commercial accessibility. Despite the acclaim and recognition it receives for Baker's signature Neo-Realism, including major awards like the Academy Awards, the film also employs stylistic choices that deliberately cater to audiences who are more accustomed to the Formalist conventions of Hollywood blockbusters. This essay argues that Anora’s success stems not just from Baker’s signature Neo-Realism but from its strategic appeal to broader cinematic sensibilities.

Anora is an anti-Cinderella coming-of-age tale that follows Ani (later revealed to be Anora), a Russian-American stripper. Underneath the glitz and glamour of her job in the strip club, it later reveals that Ani essentially has to navigate the harsh realities of her life - a compactly-shared apartment, relentless noises of urban transit and the stigma associated with her role as a sex worker. The gist of the movie comes when the 21-year old puerile son of a Russian oligarchy, Ivan, or usually referred as Vanya, is introduced to Ani. Vanya begins to be smitten by Ani, later invites her to his lavish mansion and even sweeps her into a whirlwind getaway to Las Vegas, eventually leading to their impulsive marriage. Vanya’s immense wealth represents an improbable dream that she so desperately wants to escape, so as convincing as Vanya vows to be, Ani, undoubtedly wants this dream to come true. However once the news reaches Russia, Ani’s fairy tale is threatened when Vanya’s parents send Toros and his henchmen to get hold of their son and the marriage annulled.

On the surface, Anora can be interpreted as a cautionary twist on Disney’s Pretty Woman (Marshall, 1990), which is also about a prostitute crossing paths with a wealthy bachelor. Not only does Anora have a different ending, it also gradually unpacks a lot of emotions and effectively humanizes sex workers, whose jobs often face scrutiny. Baker approaches the subject by reinterpreting the Neo-Realism genre that was first introduced in the 1940s. Neo-Realism was first coined by Arnaldo Bocelli to characterize the style and ideology of films by Italian directors like Rossellini, De-Sica, and Visconti. Neo-Realism analytically replicates the everyday life and post-war hardships of the working class in reaction to the regime of the fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini. Glossy, Hollywood-influenced productions were ceased in favor of propaganda films that were promoting fascist Italy. As a result, directors who valued their aesthetic freedoms quietly revolted against the regime by taking their cameras to the streets, neglecting communities, and their surroundings to show what the "real Italy" was, in all its diversity. This gave birth to a new movement: a people’s cinema that aimed to chronicle the struggle against fascism and human hardships with all honesty (Iannone, 2024). De-Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (1948), for instance, follows a working-class father’s desperate search for his stolen bicycle, which was essentially the family’s lifeline.

In Anora, the story centers sex worker’s fight for dignity amid economic precarity. Baker exploits the Neo-Realism genre and the minimal budget just so required to make a movie to convince us that sex workers, although get down and dirty, do establish feelings. To achieve authenticity to real life in telling an underdog’s story, it references Neo-Realism foundations, including its aesthetics and ideologies.

One of the stylistic features of Neo-Realism, as mentioned in Giannetti’s Understanding Movies (2013, p.455), is its avoidance of artifice in editing, camerawork, and lighting in favor of a simple, "styleless" style. Anora’s cinematographer, Drew Daniels, stated in an interview that his goal indeed was to make the film feel "natural and effortless" (Hemphill, 2025). Daniels prioritized the use of natural light in many daytime scenes, creating an organic feel — or the illusion that the scenes were not staged — to heighten the sense of realism and authenticity in its storytelling.

Similarly, in terms of camerawork, handheld shots, along with fleeting moments of zoom-ins, are used in Anora to immerse the audience in the chaos while also making the camera feel present, as if the scenes are documented rather than orchestrated . This is evident in the 28-minute home invasion scene, when Toros’ henchmen are ordered to track down Vanya. Daniels mentioned his resistance in using a dolly track, opting instead to place the dolly directly on the floor to introduce natural bumps and instability (Hemphill, 2025) . His handheld approach captures the imperfections of a live environment, embracing the essence of Neo-Realism. Moreover, Daniels told IndieWire that Anora actually had the actors driving on set, so its driving scenes are filmed in their natural state, which explains its minimal lighting and shakiness that achieve the Realism look  (Hemphill, 2025).

Long takes and minimal editing in Anora further reinforce Neo-Realism’s avoidance of artifice in its mise-en-scène, allowing key narrative moments to unfold organically without disruptive cuts. One striking example is a more than a 1-minute unbroken take capturing Ani and Vanya's intimate bed conversation, tracing their good times to eventually coming up with the idea of marriage. Within the same take, Vanya gets up to propose Ani, but the camera still lingers on Ani’s reaction of a mixture of dumbfoundedness and cynicism. Baker intentionally designed this approach to manipulate audience engagement: “you get the audience to actually live these moments with them (…) I’m forcing the audience to be focused on our protagonist there” (Frank, 2024). By keeping Vanya out of frame during the proposal, it gives the benefit of the doubt - does he truly mean it? The prolonged take traps viewers in Ani's psychological space, making them experience suspension of disbelief to what will happen to their marriage eventually (the blindness of young love). The avoidance of editing emphasizes the realistic portrayals of the characters’ raw emotions, allowing viewers to immerse themselves more deeply in their world and the film's diegetic reality.

Additionally, on-location shooting is a common feature of Neo-Realism. As illustrated by Giannetti’s theory of Realism (2013, p.455), Neo-Realist films typically use actual locations rather than studio sets. This approach is consistent throughout Baker’s filmography, such as the donut shop in Tangerine and the Magic Castle Inn in The Florida Project, which are real places that exist in the United States. In Anora, the boardwalk where Ani, Toros’ and the henchmen search for Vanya was shot in Coney Island , with surrounding scenes filmed in Brighton Beach, which is a known tight-knit Russian immigrant community. Their search for Vanya showcases local landmarks, including the 84-year-old sweet shop which is repeatedly visited in the film . Fans also recognize the address that Ani lives matches that of Brighton Beach (Rahmanan, 2025) . This means majority of where the film is set isn’t far away from the neighborhood. By refusing to use staged sets, using real neighborhoods of marginalized communities reinforce resonance and allowing greater mobility in telling their stories authentically.

When it comes to contextual ideologies that are distinctive of the Neo-Realism genre, film theorist, Siegfried Kracauer, illustrated inherent affinities that support his theory of Neo-Realism. The ideologies that are going to be concentrated are “Endlessness”, “Fortuitous" and “Indeterminate" (Elsaesser, 2014).

“Endlessness” — a concept articulated by Kracauer (1960, p.64-67) refers to cinema’s capacity to capture life’s uninterrupted cause-and-effect chain, rejecting Hollywood’s fragmented montages in favor of time’s organic continuum. Neo-Realist films embrace this philosophy in life by depicting life as an ongoing process without being aware of the presence of the camera, where events are interconnected and the narrative doesn't have a clear beginning or end, mirroring the endlessness of life.

Anora embodies this ideology in its opening: a distant long shot follows Ani’s nightly routine without narrative urgency. The camera lingers on seemingly mundane moments — a 10-second long take of her soliciting clients, a slow pan across the strip club, or improvised conversations with fellow strippers during breaks (like having "dollar-sign nails like a real hoe”) . These long expositional and seemingly redundant sequences immerse audience in Ani’s world and profession. When Ani comes back to the club, the audience may not even realize that all of the actions unfold, even her extended dinner break — culminates to the moment of meeting Vanya, who is the catalyst for the events that follows. If Ani isn’t taking an extended dinner break at work, she wouldn’t even have the space to be called off by her boss to escort the Russians. The temporal realism of what leads up to the “meet-cute” of Ani and Vanya makes the process feels organic rather than scripted, as if it unfolds within the real-time continuum of her shift that evokes the idea of the “Endlessness”.

The commitment to "Endlessness" extends to their search for Vanya. The film visits every corner that might have a trace of Vanya, and at times, the film even takes a break from the main narrative to showcase every little interactions between the characters — Toros’ henchman, Igor, lending Ani the scarf (which is previously used for silencing Ani) now becomes a gesture , or even when they pause to get food because they are starving . These interstitial moments reinforce life’s uninterrupted rhythm, which is associated with the concept of “Endlessness”.

The second Neo-Realist feature, the "Fortuitous", highlights life's unplanned accidents. As Kracauer noted that accidents demonstrate real life’s contingencies for plans to go arbitrary, that are unpredictable to the audience, unlike fiction where triumphs often feel destined. He also added that streets are best to show this unpredictability, with their constant flow of random conflicts and accidents that raise stakes naturally (Kracauer, 1960, p.62). Baker lays bare every unexpected hiccup Ani and the henchmen encounter in their search for Vanya on the streets: from having Toros' car getting towed after being left in the road to having Garnik vomiting on the car after eating . These random external forces which work against the characters' mirror life's arbitrariness.

The third Neo-Realist feature is “Indeterminate”, which is the genre’s tendency to deprive filmic images of objective meaning. As Kracauer observes “Natural objects, then, are surrounded with a fringe of meanings liable to touch off various moods, emotions, runs of inarticulate thoughts; in other words, they have theoretically unlimited number of psychological and mental correspondences” (Kracauer, 1960, p.68). Neo-Realist films are committed to capture the ambiguity and open-endedness of life as nature runs its course. Anora’s final act embodies this: no definitive resolution is given and character motivations are left open-ended.

Even though Igor and Ani only share glimpses of exchanges, their chemistry subtly emerges later on. After Vanya's parents annul the marriage, Igor interrupts to demand an apology from Vanya. Consider him making this demand in front of powerful Russian oligarchs, Igor's action demonstrates an extent of empathy for Ani's situation. Igor then vows to send Ani home, and the final act essentially follows these two characters' journey. The scene where they uncover the true meaning of the name “Anora” (Ani’s official name) becomes the film’s most vulnerable exchanges — a moment of raw intimacy that persists despite Ani’s attempt to mask it by accusing Igor of having “rape eyes” when she is held hostage. Their connection manifests not through words, but through Igor’s kind acts and the unspoken tension between them, leaving audiences to decipher what lingers beneath the surface. Their open-ended unspoken interactions in here reinforce Kraceuer’s concept of “Indeterminate”.

Additionally, as Anora steps out of Igor’s car the next morning, Igor makes a smooth gesture by handing her back the ring that Vanya gives her. “Don’t tell Toros,” he says, shuts the door, and carries her luggage. This leads to Anora climbing on top of Igor, but soon after they become intimate, she breaks down and sobs in his embrace . Her weeping synchronizes with the sound of the car’s windshield wipers, which continues through the ending credits. The images speak for itself: Anora may be overwhelmed by the weight of the events, unable to process Igor’s generosity; or realizing she can never escape her life as a stripper — with Igor’s actions potentially representing just another transactional offer. What the ending essentially means is interpretative to the audience as Baker tells IndieWire: “…That’s one way of looking at it. I definitely have a different interpretation. It’s designed in a way that allows for different interpretations” (Lattanzio, 2024). The ambiguous nature of the ending echoes the concept of “Indeterminate”, reflecting Neo-Realism’s embrace of life’s multiplicity of meaning.

While the analysis has explored Neo-Realism aesthetics and ideologies in Anora with references to Kracauer’s “Endlessness”, “Fortuitous" and “Indeterminate”, Sean Baker is not the pre-eminent directors who has revisited the genre. American independents have engaged with Neo-Realism for decades — from Killer of Sheep (Burnett, 1978) to Boyz n the Hood (Singleton, 1991) and Dazed and Confused (Linklater, 1993). Globally, Taiwanese auteurs like Edward Yang and Hou Hsiao-Hsien have similarly drawn inspirations from Neo-Realism (Balmont, 2023). Baker’s consistent iconography just so happens to stand out in the digital age, when filmmakers can manipulate images with digital technologies at every stage from production to post-production. American cinema has become saturated with CGI-heavy stories driven by fiction over reality and this pretty much dominated 21st-century blockbusters. Yet Baker chooses the rawest filmmaking approach as his inspiration for telling deeply moving stories. Eventually his style is recognized in the film community and his reputation grew after Tangerine (2015), The Florida Project (2017), and Red Rocket (2021). His influence in independent cinema has led him to radically trademark Neo-Realism for 21st-century Hollywood.

What Baker does differently in Anora is also incorporating elements of Formalist filmmaking that general audiences may recognize from mainstream cinema. In Formalism, Expressionism is as important as the subject matter itself, focusing more on spiritual and psychological truths, which filmmakers believe are best conveyed by distorting the material world's surface rather than representing its objective nature (Giannetti, 2013, p.29). Even the scale of shooting Anora allows more imagination and experimentation within Baker’s usual realist approach. Ultimately, Baker has reinterpreted Neo-Realism through this fusion.

Anora has been Baker’s highest-budget film yet, standing at $6 million (Golden Globes, n.d.). The scale of it surpasses that of his past critical films, including Red Rocket ($1.1 million) and The Florida Project ($2 million) (IMDb, n.d.; Indiewire, 2014). This is evident in its use of equipment as it managed to source higher-budget cameras, such as the ARRICAM LT 35 mm film camera, which is often associated with larger productions (ARRI, 2025). Whereas in the past, Baker often shot with cheaper cameras, like the iPhone 5S for Tangerine and the Arriflex 16SR3 for Red Rocket (Kodak, 2022). Even the scale of set design, costumes, and down to the use of professional actors — rather than casting real people as in The Florida Project and Tangerine — reflect the heavier budget. Deliberate stylistic choices have also been made to accentuate the psychology of Ani. These factors make Anora’s production feel more staged than his usual Realism in filmmaking.

Formalist stylistic choices are shown in Anora’s cinematography. Framing is manipulated to infer meaning as opposed to documenting the objective nature of physical reality that Neo-Realism aims to achieve. Cinematographer Drew Daniels mentioned that Anora utilized vintage Lomo anamorphic lenses and mostly “shot with two lenses, the 35 and 75” (Mottram, n.d.). When Ani first meets Vanya in the club as they sit tightly together, the narrow framing is almost boxing them into the moment, compelling the audience to feel every bit of their tension and adrenaline . In contrast, wide frames are used to emphasize the vastness of Vanya’s mansion, or to accentuate the loneliness of the characters. In more introspective scenes like when Ani looks out Vanya’s window, the camera frames Ani with generous negative space with anamorphic lens. The first instance occurs when she first arrives to the mansion, and the second, when it is snow-covered, happens as she is about to leave behind Vanya and the improbable dream he represents. The vastness of the space emphasizes her loneliness in her troubled journey. The manipulation of framing in here gives meaning that defies Neo-Realism’s usual naturalistic “styleless” approach, as mentioned earlier.

The colour-grading in Anora is also dynamic. Colours are manipulated to add meaning to the diegetic world that Ani lives in. The colour palette changes according to the settings to heighten the mood that Ani experiences in relation to her circumstantial environment, rather than remaining naturalistic and static. In scenes where Ani is in the strip club where she feels most confident, or during her getaway in Las Vegas, the hues are intentionally intensified to evoke a layer of surrealism. Conversely, colours are more desaturated when highlighting the bleakness of Ani’s reality. Cool tones and desaturated colour-grading are used in quieter moments of the film, such as when Ani journeys back home . The manipulation of colours in here is also intentional to the storytelling of the film that contradicts Neo-Realism’s aesthetics.

Again, Formalism involves a high degree of manipulation or stylization of reality (Giannetti, 2013, p.29). In Anora, the deception of reality is employed to manipulate the audience into believing in the romance between Vanya and Ani. As Baker said in an interview “I did approach it knowing that I was going to employ the tropes of a romantic comedy, and essentially give the audience a romantic comedy for the first almost-hour of the movie.” (The Film Stage, 2024). This layer of romanticism is carried through mise-en-scènes. For instance, the instant gratification that the upbeat pop song “Greatest Day” plays when Ani accepts Vanya’s proposal, as well as the helicopter shot that pulls out from Vanya’s mansion, suggest an idea of a “happily ever after” . Moreover, there is also a supercut of Vanya and Ani that compiles fast-forward footage of their time together, simulating the adrenaline rush of passionate love. The editing in the supercut is certainly more fast-paced than the rest of the movie: from showcasing Anora’s exclusive week with Vanya, to their whirlwind getaway in Vegas, down to their marriage. All these manipulations in the mise-en-scène gratify the audience with “feel-good” moments similar to those in most romantic films. This manipulation in reality opposes the notions of a Neo-Realist film.

In addition, there is a considerable amount of humour that convincingly positions Anora as a comedy to engage the audience in the narrative. Interestingly, it was even nominated as a comedy at the Golden Globes. The awkward silence between Igor and Ani when Toros sends his henchmen to retrieve Vanya’s marriage certificate adds to this comedic effect. Humour is also added into Toros’ solemn baptism scene — when Vanya’s emergency interrupts a baptism ceremony and Toros frantically passes the baby to the lady next to him. Furthermore, the gangster-esque elements in this supposedly realist film inject a significant amount of slapstick humour, especially when the henchmen later reveal themselves to be arguably incompetent at capturing Vanya, which contrast with their tough, hardened images often seen in mafia films . Their lack of agility and malice during action scenes injects physical comedy. These deliberate directing choices have little to do with Ani’s journey, instead creates a comedic flair that is less characteristic of Neo-Realism.

Additionally, consider the 28-duration of the home invasion scene, fight sequences are choreographed and require extensive stage blocking and control over lighting. In an interview, Drew Daniels mentioned that filming this scene took 10 days, during which they had to manage continuity of the lighting in a large room with windows in every direction while having only seven hours of natural light during winter, facing every imaginable weather condition (Mottram, n.d.). The staged manipulation of space and lighting surrounding the long fight scene makes the film more Formulaic than Realism.

Anora’s references to Neo-Realism and Formalism demonstrates Sean Baker as a versatile director who has drawn inspiration from these differing genres to address sensitive subjects of marginalized sex workers. The fusion of Neo-Realism and Formalism reflects his ambition to transcend the Neo-Realism genre that modern Hollywood filmmakers often overlook. Baker revisits Neo-Realist aesthetics while embracing the ideologies defined by film theorist Siegfried Kracauer. The infusion of Formalist elements makes this unconventional Social-Realist film more accessible to a mainstream market who may be accustomed to Hollywood’s Formalism.

Though there have been debates surrounding the authenticity of Anora, perhaps some viewers from the Russian immigrant community or Brooklyn strippers may not identify with the film, for them, encountering a Russian oligarch in their neighborhood may not even happen. Some critics have even accused Baker of glamourising poverty for aesthetic purposes. However, Baker’s approach to Neo-Realism reflects his consistent efforts to bridge the gap between our reality and Anora’s diegetic world, ensuring that the environment and circumstances of the social underdog feel real and authentic to the audience. By immersing us in her reality, he allows us to universally resonate with her experiences, even if they may seem foreign. By incorporating Formalism, he adds a modern twist to his usual Social-Realist filmmaking while reminding the audience that Anora is, after all, still fiction. In the end, it is intriguing to see a 21st Century independent filmmaker thriving in both commercial and critical success, as well as maintaining an auteurist vision — all with a small budget. Following the Oscar triumph of Anora, it will be exciting to see how Sean Baker’s low-budget, Neo-Realist-inspired filmmaking techniques influence a gradually declining Hollywood in the years to come.

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