A rising filmmaker triumphs with sassy and sublime ‘Anora’
When filmmaker Sean Baker chose to shoot an entire feature film – “Tangerine” (2015) – using only iPhones, he caught the attention of film enthusiasts and turned it into his breakthrough.
For LGBTQ audiences, however, what felt much more groundbreaking was that Baker had made a film about trans sex workers on the “mean streets” of Hollywood, cast real trans women to play them, and depicted them with as much humanity as the cis/het protagonists in any mainstream movie.
It really wasn’t much of a bold leap for Baker, who had from the beginning centered his movies around people from marginalized, largely stigmatized or disregarded communities.
A story about transgender sex workers was a logical next step, and the years since have seen him continue in the same vein, both by advocating directly for decriminalization and respect for sex workers and by the compassionate treatment of their stories in his work, – such as 2017’s “The Florida Project,” arguably his most visible success so far.
