Why Anora’s Best Picture Win Wasn’t Fully Earned

Anora won Best Picture at the 97th Academy Awards on March 2, 2025. The case against that result is not that Sean Baker’s film lacks energy or craft; it is that its propulsive first half sets up a more complicated story than its characters and final act ultimately deliver. That makes the win understandable, but, in my view, not fully deserved.

What Anora won—and what the award does not settle

The Academy awarded Anora Best Picture, along with four other Oscars, including Best Director for Sean Baker and Best Actress for Mikey Madison, according to the Associated Press. The result is settled; the judgment about whether it was the year’s best film is not.

#	Preview	Product	Price
1		Anora (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]	$32.28	Buy on Amazon
2		Anora - Limitiertes SteelBook (4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray) [4K UHD]	$47.91	Buy on Amazon
3		Anora Blu-ray | Mikey Madison	$32.56	Buy on Amazon

The official Criterion Collection listing describes Anora as a 2024 U.S. film written, directed, and edited by Baker, with a 139-minute runtime. It follows Ani, a Brooklyn erotic dancer and sex worker, whose marriage to the son of a Russian oligarch turns into a frantic effort to manage the consequences. The AP describes it as a screwball farce; Criterion calls it an anti-Cinderella story. Both labels capture the film’s collision of romantic fantasy and comic disorder, but neither guarantees that its character drama lands.

Why the film’s story loses force after its setup

A vivid premise becomes a prolonged scramble

The early marriage gives the film a sharp engine: Ani appears to have seized a life-changing opportunity, while the people around her see a problem to be contained. The resulting rush of pursuit, negotiation, and attempted damage control is often funny and kinetic. Baker knows how to turn a simple situation into escalating physical and social chaos.

#1 Best Overall

Sale

Anora (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

• Movie dvd

$32.28

Buy on Amazon

But the central question is not only whether the marriage can survive the family’s intervention. It is what Ani understands about the bargain she has made, what choices remain hers, and how the experience changes her. The film gives considerable screen time to the scramble around her. Its momentum can therefore feel like a substitute for developing the emotional and social stakes that the premise raises.

The second half shifts the emphasis without fully deepening it

As the story moves away from the initial romantic high, its comedy becomes more uncomfortable and its attention shifts toward the people tasked with handling the crisis. That change has potential: the film could use the aftermath to reveal how power, money, and class shape Ani’s options. Instead, the shift can leave her surrounded by other people’s plans and reactions, while the film offers less access to her interior life than its premise seems to promise.

This is the basis for the Guardian’s March 3, 2025 description of the film as “muddled, hollow at the middle.” That is one critic’s judgment, not a consensus verdict. It is persuasive where the film’s sequence of escalating incidents feels more developed than the character consequences linking them. It is less persuasive if taken to mean the film has no emotional or formal accomplishment at all.

Rank #2

Anora - Limitiertes SteelBook (4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray) [4K UHD]

$47.91

Buy on Amazon

What the final act achieves—and what it leaves unresolved

The final stretch changes the register again, making room for a quieter, more exposed encounter after so much noise. That contrast gives the ending a real emotional charge: the comedy’s protective speed falls away, and Ani is left with the cost of what has happened. Yet a potent final mood is not the same as a fully developed arc. The ending can suggest vulnerability without making the preceding events feel like a sufficiently examined transformation.

That gap matters for a Best Picture argument. A film may be exhilarating scene by scene and still leave its central character’s experience less legible than the surrounding plot. Anora’s last moments complicate the farce; they do not entirely resolve the imbalance between the energy of the events and the depth of the account they produce.

Does Anora deliver on its interest in sex work and class?

Baker has publicly connected the film to challenging stigma around sex work; the AP reported that aim in an October 15, 2024 feature. That context matters, but intention is not the same as execution. The film gives Ani work, professional fluency, and agency rather than treating her occupation as a mere shock reveal. At the same time, its plot is driven by a wealthy family’s power to disrupt her life, and the comic spectacle can crowd out a fuller view of her working world or the structures that shape her choices.

Rank #3

Anora Blu-ray | Mikey Madison

• Mikey Madison, Paul Weissman, Yura Borisov

$32.56

Buy on Amazon

The result is not a simple failure to take sex work seriously. The film’s tonal mixture—romance, farce, and social discomfort—is part of its design. The question is whether that mixture develops into an account of Ani’s circumstances or mainly uses them to power an increasingly chaotic story. For me, the film raises that question more forcefully than it answers it.

Why voters could reasonably choose it

• Commanding craft: Baker’s writing, direction, and editing make the story move with uncommon urgency, while Madison anchors its volatility with a performance that can be forceful, funny, and guarded.
• A distinctive tonal gamble: The film refuses to stay neatly inside romance, comedy, or social drama. Its instability is a weakness when the shifts feel underdeveloped, but also a source of surprise and energy.
• Independent-film achievement: The AP reported a $6 million production budget. That scale is relevant to the accomplishment of the filmmaking, though it is not itself evidence that the film is better than its competitors.
• Recognition beyond the Oscars: Anora won the Palme d’Or at Cannes before its Academy Awards run. Its Oscar success was not an isolated sign of institutional interest.

Accepting Best Picture, Baker said, “This film was made on the blood, sweat and tears of incredible indie artists — and long live independent film,” as reported by ABC News. It is a generous statement of solidarity with independent filmmaking, not proof that the film should have won.

Was Anora the best of the Best Picture nominees?

Calling the win undeserved does not establish that another nominee was objectively superior. A fair comparison would ask which films more fully developed their central characters, carried their premises through the second half, controlled tonal changes, and made form serve emotional and thematic purpose. The available facts about Anora’s awards and production do not answer those comparative questions, so naming a replacement winner without a direct comparison would overstate the case.

My objection is narrower: Anora is a striking, carefully made film whose narrative velocity can outrun its characterization and social inquiry. Those qualities explain its appeal and make it a serious contender. They also leave enough unfinished work at its center that I would not call its Best Picture victory fully earned.

Quick Recap

SaleBestseller No. 1

Anora (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

Movie dvd

$32.28

Bestseller No. 2

Anora - Limitiertes SteelBook (4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray) [4K UHD]

$47.91

Bestseller No. 3

Anora Blu-ray | Mikey Madison

Mikey Madison, Paul Weissman, Yura Borisov

$32.56

Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.