Cannes Film Festival: Indie ‘Anora’ wins top honour Palme d’Or

Sean Baker is the first American filmmaker to win the Palme d'Or since Terrence Mallick in 2012.

Sean Baker’s “Anora,” a comic but devastating Brooklyn odyssey about a sex worker who marries the son of a wealthy Russian oligarch, has won the Cannes Film Festival’s top award, the Palme d’Or.

Baker accepted the prize with his movie’s star, Mikey Madison, watching in the audience at the Cannes closing ceremony Saturday. The win for “Anora” marks a new high point for Baker, the director of “The Florida Project.” It’s also, remarkably, the fifth straight Palme d’Or won by indie distributor Neon, following “Parasite,” “Titane,” “Triangle of Sadness” and last year’s winner, “Anatomy of a Fall.”

“This, literally, has been my singular goal as a filmmaker for the past 30 years, so I’m not really sure what I’m going to do with the rest of my life,” said Baker, laughing.

But Baker, the first American filmmaker to win the Palme since Terrence Mallick in 2012 with “The Tree of Life,” quickly answered that his ambition would remain to “fight to keep cinema alive.” The 53-year-old director said the world needed reminding that “watching a film at home while scrolling through your phone, answering emails and half paying attention is just not the way, although some tech companies would like us to think so.”

“So I say the future of cinema is where it started: in a movie theater,” said Baker.

While “Anora” was arguably the most acclaimed film of the festival, its win was a slight surprise. Many expected either the gentle Indian drama “All We Imagine As Light” or the Iranian film “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” to win. Both of those films also took home prizes.

It wasn’t the only jolt of the closing ceremony, though. Before George Lucas was given an honorary Palme d’Or, his old friend and sometimes collaborator Francis Ford Coppola appeared to present it to him, reuniting two of the most pivotal figures of the last half-century of American moviemaking.

“All We Imagine As Light,” about sisterhood in modern Mumbai, won the Grand Prix, Cannes’ second-highest honor. Payal Kapadia’s second feature was the first Indian in competition in Cannes in 30 years.