 Mikey Madison in Anora From Starlet and Tangerine to The Florida Project and Red Rocket, filmmaker Sean Baker has become one of the most insightful storytellers of America’s outskirts. Baker’s films give marginalized groups a voice without patronizing or exploiting their authentic experiences. Focused consistently on sex workers, he writes well-rounded characters with agency and individuality in their stories. He directs with humanistic sensibilities, which help to erase the stigma that adult work often faces.
Baker continues to meet the lives of sex workers with compassion in his latest, Anora. The film explores the American dream from a two-sided coin: a powerful family afforded everything at their disposal, and an independent young woman caught in the crossfires who rightfully pursues a better life. This dual narrative embeds a satisfying, energetic, often funny picture with reverberating melancholy. The fairytale of Anora unfolds through Baker’s authentic voice. He anchors a lively whirlwind fantasy in the aching reality of who gets to keep dreaming, and who gets left behind. Led by a magnificent Mikey Madison, whose performance should make her the brightest star, Anora embraces the independence and vulnerability of a young woman coming of age. The film introduces Anora (Madison) at a Manhattan nightclub called Headquarters, where she works nightly as an exotic dancer. Going by Ani, she effortlessly scans a floor full of men and leads them each into private rooms. Ani joins a micro-community of female dancers whose artistry is on full display; the opening montage of their various dances sets an energetic tone and immediately establishes a kinship towards them, Ani especially. From her astute observations of male clients' needs to her thoughtful interactions with them, she knows how to play the game. She also recognizes this livelihood as a hustle and will seize the opportunity for her Cinderella story. When an excitable rich Russian kid named Ivan (Mark Eidelshtein) walks into the club, Ani's Russian background gets her assigned to cater to his needs. She tells him she never speaks Russian but decides to do so in this case, letting her guard down. As the two form a connection, he whisks her away from Headquarters, and her life takes an enchanting turn. Ivan lives in a mansion (afforded by being the son of an oligarch) and enjoys a lavish lifestyle Ani could only dream of having. The more dates Ani and Ivan go on, the deeper she falls not for his money, but for the gratification that being with him means she can leave Headquarters behind. Ivan asks if they could be exclusive, and one impulse leads to another until they dash to a Vegas chapel. Ani always wanted a Cinderella honeymoon suite, and it comes at a depressing cost. As she works hard to reach what Ivan takes for granted, the carriage gradually transforms into a pumpkin. Baker draws out the facade for as long as possible, creating a destructive slow-burn drama. The film unravels into a chaotic spell of crushed dreams at the hands of a rich kid's tantrum. Baker's script deftly balances the two very different sides of Ani and Vanya's relationship: the former opens her heart and mind to the potential of a new reality, while the latter bleeds his entourage dry and runs from accountability. In Vanya's eyes, Ani is a token he can gamble. For Ani, Vanya represents a bigger and brighter future. When his truest colors show, the film morphs from a romanticized whirlwind romance to an estranged relationship drama about class divides and the poignant bonds formed through quiet solidarity. Baker finds an incredible anchor in Mikey Madison to convey the protagonist’s downward spiral. Ani is the viewer's way into a world of dashed dreams and harsh realities. Madison plays the character with such conviction and fearlessness, that one immediately feels excited by her ferociousness and concerned for her fate. She conveys a person's heart being broken in real time, trying so adamantly to hide how hurtful it is to lose each piece. Madison fills Ani with remarkable nuances and moments of small revelations, where one can sense she carries an emotional weight deep down. Her work gives the film's ending a reverberating impact and urges the viewer to reflect on Ani's journey. In addition to Madison's star-making turn, the supporting cast of Anora brings various compelling energies to the story. In a standout scene of Vanya's henchmen Garrick (Vache Tovmasyan) and Igor (Yura Borisov) "breaking in" to his house, the entertaining sequence plays out like a slow-motion thriller. Baker fleshes out Garrick and Igor's personalities; they are hesitant to keep acting on behalf of the Vanya family’s representative Toros (Karren Karagulian). All three actors bring fantastic comedic sensibilities to the film. Their interactions often unravel into a comedy of errors and shed light on the ridiculousness they have to put up with to cover Vanya's antics. With Anora, Baker approaches a larger scale of filmmaking with his same core sensibilities. His focus on under-explored communities and empathy for stigmatized individuals give this story tremendous heart. Ani might be whisked off her feet, but the film is planted firmly on the ground with tenderness. Electric and sorrowful, Anora paints an aching picture of the humanistic costs associated with the luxury of dreaming.
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 Kaniehtiio Horn in Seeds From starring in Vanessa Matsui’s endearing web series Ghost BFF to appearing on hit television shows Letterkenny and Reservation Dogs, Kaniehtiio Horn is an exciting talent in the Canadian scene and beyond. Horn continues to show intriguing range with her feature directorial debut Seeds, which premiered in the 2024 TIFF Discovery program. Incorporating the ingredients of a home invasion thriller, a dark comedy, and a twisted horror, Horn crafts a genre film about preserving Indigenous legacy. While the film falls short in balancing various tones, Seeds finds moments to bud in the layered groundwork. Horn shows a singular voice in her thoughtful commentary on seedy corporations and in a well-defined slice of contemporary reservation life. Her potential behind the camera makes for a worthwhile experience that leaves you with the glimmers of bigger and better things to come.
In Seeds, Horn plays a Kanien’kehaka (Mohawk) woman named Ziggy who aims to make it big as a social media influencer. Much to her excitement, she lands a job promoting Nature’s Oath, a seed and fertilizer company that checks off the boxes of an environmentally conscious venture. Showered with big cheques and branded swag, Ziggy spreads the seeds of Nature’s Oath to her growing subscribers. The opportunity feels too good to be true, but Ziggy presses on in the hope of making a decent income and progressing in an exciting new direction. Nature’s Oath becomes the driving force of Ziggy’s decision making. When her cousin (Dallas Goldtooth) calls her to house-sit for a relative in the middle of the woods, Ziggy reluctantly agrees on one condition: the place must have a stable Internet connection. She finds a hot spot that overlooks much of the community, just as her reliability on the company comes to a halt. When her cousin finds out about Nature’s Oath, he feverishly explains why she needs to stop. The company plants seeds in a corrupt avenue of industrial agriculture; they are the enemy, and with Ziggy’s endorsement, she is selling out to her community. What begins as a promising social media gig quickly becomes a contradiction of values, and a matter of life and death. The company breeds a violent stranger sent to follow Ziggy into her small Kanien’kehaka community and steal her family’s legacy for corporate gain. As Ziggy fights to protect the seeds on this reservation, she taps into the ancestral history of her people and the horrors that have threatened multi-generational land. Written and directed by Horn, Seeds has a consistent and clear voice throughout, though her narrative focus spreads very thin. The attempts to juggle multiple stories in one shot falls flat. The film jumps from a home invasion thriller, to a family drama, to a blood-soaked horror fest, without a strong through line to hold all the tonal shifts together. As a result, Seeds plays out as a collection of ideas rather than a cohesive narrative. The most effective layer — using the seeds as a metaphor for fertilizing a healthy environment or pollinating with toxicity — gets lost beneath stylized and generic genre choices. With an imbalance in the story and tone, the emotional stakes feel rushed, as does the spiral into twisted horror in the final act. While an interesting choice to visualize Ziggy’s moral stance and the significance of exacting her revenge, the decision arrives too late in the game to have a stronger impact. The film thrives more in how Horn populates a small community with unique detail and shared history. She strongly establishes the setting, and makes ancestral connections between characters who give voice to the legacy Ziggy fights for. The film also does a neat job visualizing the protagonist’s frame of mind and the crime culture that influences her. First Nations actor Graham Greene appears as a figment of her imagination, specifically in hosting mode. Many who grew up in Canada know Greene from the show Exhibit A: Secrets of Forensic Science, in which he hosted a series of cold cases through the 1980s and 90s. His iconic presence, used as a guiding voice for Ziggy’s conscience, brings out a nostalgic quality and adds personality to the film. While Seeds may not entirely work tonally or narratively, Kaniehtiio Horn sprinkles her feature directorial debut with enough vision to exist in a world of its own.  Ralph Fiennes in Conclave (2024) The process of electing a new Pope is usually hidden from the outside world. Like a covert operation, the most powerful Cardinal members of the Catholic Church gather behind closed Vatican doors to define a new era. As several frontrunners emerge, the cardinals face a growing volume of competing interests and conflicting beliefs. This centuries-old ritual is closely guarded by Cardinal Lawrence, who struggles between the lines of faith, doubt, and religious duty. He oversees a powerful game of politics from the clinical rooms of the Vatican. Author Robert Harris saw the literary potential and wrote the bestselling 2016 novel Conclave, a thriller with cinematic sensibilities as Edward Berger’s marvelous-looking film adaptation proves. In his follow up to the Oscar-winning All Quiet on the Western Front, Berger’s Conclave enlightens one of the most mysterious events through a riveting web of secrets and lies.
When the beloved Pope suddenly dies, Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) is tasked with managing the inner workings of voting for a new leader. The process requires that all cardinals be sequestered to avoid outside influence of world events. In the Sistine Chapel where voting takes place, cardinals from around the world secretly wield their overlapping views against each other in pursuit of power. On the surface, they work in quiet audacity. Behind the scenes, their true intentions are hidden between sacred walls, only coming to light when certain accusations and revelations spiral out of their control. The responsibility to keep this conclave in order falls on Lawrence, who listens carefully to the cardinals’ concerns and must ensure that the election unfolds in full transparency. As such, Lawrence goes head-to-head with quite a few ambitious figures willing to manipulate their way to the throne. Lawrence finds himself undertaking a duty he never thought he had to perform. He was ready to leave Rome altogether and reexamine his own deeply conflicted faith, but his request had been denied by the Pope. Lawrence walks a fine line between questioning his beliefs in the religious institution, and listening to the urges of those impassioned to fight for it. Cardinal Secretary of State Aldo Bellini (Stanley Tucci) stresses that liberals must unite to stop people like Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto), whose antiquated views threaten to undo the progress made by Bellini’s supporters. Conservative Cardinal Tremblay (John Lithgow) is of particular interest; being the last person to have conversed with the Pope, Tremblay might be pulling strings on the late leader’s behalf. The arrival of Cardinal Benitez (Carlos Diehz) from Afghanistan also stirs conversation and leads to an intriguing development. The screenplay by Peter Straughan excels at highlighting all these characters not just by their power rankings, but by their human failings. Focusing on Lawrence at the center of potential controversies and schemes raise the stakes, as he himself is a contradictory character. His personal doubts cast a shadow of uncertainty across the Vatican, causing other cardinals to question his ambitions and whether his inquisitiveness is a ploy to support his own candidacy. “You need to pick a side,” Bellini demands to Lawrence. The future of the Catholic Church depends on it. Investigative interactions between cardinals helps to unveil a tense mystery at the film’s core. Berger’s superb direction creaks open the doors of an electoral system that had long been shrouded in secrecy. He makes use of multiple locations, from offices and staircases to theater rooms and courtyards. No stone is left unturned. No corner is without the whispers of corruption. Even the seals of the late Pope’s quarters are not enough protection, nor the beautifully painted walls of the Sistine Chapel. The deeper into this conclave the film goes, the less places there are to hide from an antiquated foundation that needs to be disrupted. Conclave has an astounding visual uniformity that adds to the story’s ritualistic nature. While the cardinals elect in a place of pristine historical beauty, they are sequestered in clinical-looking environments. The inner workings of the conclave are really a mundane series of human failings. Stéphane Fontaine’s cinematography illuminates cold interiors and basks in the sterile light. Suzie Davies’ detailed production design distinguishes between the many spaces cardinals occupy and gather in, the theater room being a tremendous highlight. We often see the cardinals move wherever they please, like using their phones in the courtyard. Whereas the group of sisters in the film, overseen by Sister Agnes (Isabella Rossellini), fade into shadows and backgrounds. Lisy Christl's costume design incorporates a uniform approach between the cardinals wearing red and the sisters wearing blue. The colors red and blue play a striking role in the film's color palette. In addition to the visuals, the sound and score of Conclave reverberate. Much like composer Volker Bertelmann’s Oscar-winning work for Berger’s All Quiet on the Western Front, here Bertelmann creates another distinctive score that utilizes a minimal variety of notes. The music intensifies increasingly tense narrative developments, as do an accomplished group of actors. With a cast like Conclave’s, to deem one actor best in show would be to compliment the work of another, as this ensemble finds an incredibly collaborative groove together. Part of the mystery and thrill of this story is watching the characters bounce off each other. Though it takes an actor of immense gravitas and control to set a consistent energy for the supporting players to orbit around. The film has its unwavering leader in Ralph Fiennes, whose towering talent reaches new heights as Cardinal Lawrence. Every close-up of Fiennes is a blessing to understanding not just the nuances of his character, but the complexities of the institution he wrestles with. Fiennes walks the line between faith and doubt in a compelling magnitude. The supporting players have brief moments to shine, and they do so with the reliability one comes to expect. Isabella Rossellini has a standout scene when her character unexpectedly breaks a vow of silence with damning truths. Carlos Diehz, making his feature film acting debut, stands out in a stunning scene where Cardinal Benitez questions what the other cardinals know about war. Benitez also personifies a bold and startling twist that leaves much to ruminate on, as this entire conclave procedural does. From the artistry behind the camera to the terrific actors in front of it, Conclave explores political tension in a fresh and fittingly disruptive manner. |
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