Sean Baker’s ‘Anora’ Wins Palme d’Or at Cannes

The first American film to win the prestigious prize at the Cannes Film Festival since 2011

It was clear that Sean Baker’s Anora was a frontrunner for the top prize at Cannes, the Palme d’Or, from the time it premiered; everywhere you went at the festival, people were buzzing about Anora.

This comedy-drama, directed and written by Sean Baker, stars actress Mikey Madison in the titular role as an exotic dancer. Her romance with the son of a Russian oligarch – which leads to an elopement – has twists and turns, and it gripped audiences during the festival. Anora is the first American film to win the Palme d’Or since 2011’s The Tree of Life.

The Cannes Film Festival has many prizes, so even though Anora won the top prize, other filmmakers and film talent didn’t go home empty-handed. The Grand Prix went to All We Imagine as Light from director Payal Kapadia (Kapadia also wrote the film). The film received an 8-minute standing ovation after it premiered.

The Jury Prize at Cannes went to musical-crime-comedy film Emilia Pérez, a much-buzzed-about film with an all-star cast, including Selena Gomez and Zoe Saldaña. The film was written and directed by French director Jacques Audiard. Speaking of all-star casts, the prize for Best Performance by an Actor went to American actor Jesse Plemons for his turn in the star-studded Kinds of Kindness, which featured Plemons alongside Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Joe Alwyn, and more. Kinds of Kindness was directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, whose film Poor Things took home four Oscars this year.

In the category of Best Performance by an Actress, multiple actresses won for their work in Emilia Pérez, including Adriana Paz, Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón, and Selena Gomez. Other female-centered stories, like Anora and Emilia Pérez, captured the interest of Cannes audiences, including fan-favorite, The Substance, starring Demi Moore. The horror film stars Moore, Margaret Qualley, and Dennis Quaid, and the film took home the award for Best Screenplay. It was written and directed by Coralie Fargeat.

In the Un Certain Regard category, the Jury Prize went to L’Histoire de Souleymane, a gripping story about a 20-something refugee from Guinea trying to survive in Paris while working as a bicycle food delivery person and trying to secure asylum in France. The actor in the title role, Abou Sangare, took home the prize for Best Actor, deservedly so. His performance was so powerful and moving; after the film’s premiere, there wasn’t a dry eye in the theater. The Un Certain Regard Prize went to Black Dog from director Guan Hu.

Outside of the festival’s closing ceremony, there were other buzzy moments. The 77^th Cannes Film Festival welcomed thousands of festival-goers amid a bustling and exciting festival that honored film industry greats, like actress Meryl Streep, and Japanese animation studio, Studio Ghibli. Both Streep and the famed studio received Honorary Palme d’Or awards for their indelible marks on cinema. Studio Ghibli is best known for its groundbreaking films like The Boy and the Heron, Spirited Away, and Castle in the Sky.

While Francis Ford Coppola’s return with his sprawling new film Megalopolis was, initially, predicted to be among the biggest headlines from the festival, it ended up being the smaller, quieter films that ultimately made the biggest waves. As they say: The smaller the dog, the bigger the bark. We’ve seen time and time again how this idiom can extend to film, too: The smaller the film’s budget, the bigger the film can hit the market. (Films like Napoleon Dynamite, Moonlight, Rocky, and The Blair Witch Project are proof-positive of this theory. L’Histoire de Souleymane, which was shot with a very small budget, also made huge waves at Cannes – time will tell how these waves translate to box office numbers.)

With another Cannes Film Festival on the books, cinephiles everywhere can rejoice that smaller, weirder, more interesting films than some of the big-budget franchises (which are also an important part of the industry), are being celebrated loudly – and with long standing ovations – in the south of France year after year.

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