Anora resists the clichéd sex worker fairy tale for a real, human story

Sean Baker’s Palme D’Or-winning new feature Anora is about a sex worker in Brooklyn .

Mikey Madison is a 23-year-old dancer and sex worker from south Brooklyn .

She is enamoured with the grotesque excess of his wealth but at the same time we see what seems to be genuine affection sprouting beneath her practised charm.

The most moving part of Anora was to witness the youthful ability to be so completely and incorrectly convinced of something.

Baker insists on evading the more comforting or cliche choice at each turn, with almost grim determination.

There is something truthful about the depiction of how lives like Anora 's and Igor 's are set into motion by forces outside themselves.