NEON Triumphs for Fifth Year in a Row as ‘Anora’ Wins Palme d’Or at Cannes!

The 2024 Cannes Film Festival was officially closed yesterday, May 25, 2024, as the prizes for the movies and the actors were awarded at the closing ceremony. It was a very exciting and content-filled event, and we have also reported on numerous movies that had their premiere at Cannes, some of which were received well, while others… not so much. But, of course, what everyone wants to know is who won the Palme d’Or, the most important award at Cannes, and we can finally confirm that NEON’s film Anora won the award for the best in-competition movie shown at the festival.

Several interesting facts can be said about this movie and its victory, so we are going to discuss them in the upcoming paragraphs, while here – we can only congratulate Anora and all the people involved with the project on a major success.

Anora was written and directed by Sean Baker, best known for his work on Tangerine and Red Rocket, and it seems that the movie was an absolute hit at Cannes, managing to beat a very tough competition this year. Interestingly enough, this is the first American film after 2011’s The Tree of Life that won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, which is certainly an interesting fact, although we know that the Hollywood establishment doesn’t have such a large influence in Europe.

What is even more interesting is that this is the fifth year in a row that NEON’s movie has won the Palme d’Or, but this was the first American winner. It all started with the South Korean film Parasite, after which came the Franco-Belgian film Titane, the Swedish film Triangle of Sadness, the French film Anatomy of a Fall, and now Anora, the first American film on the list. NEON has obviously found the formula for Cannes, as the juries keep loving their movies year after year.

The story is about a young stripper named Anora, who works in Brighton Beach, a part of New York known for having a lot of Russian immigrants. Since she is able to speak some Russian, her boss sets her up with Russian clients. Everything changes when she meets Vanya, the son of a Russian oligarch, and the two of them fall in love with each other, starting a somewhat fairytale relationship that is threatened when Vanya’s parents come to New York to annul the marriage.

The film stars Mikey Madison as Anora / Ani, Mark Eydelshteyn as Ivan “Vanya” Zakharov, Yuriy Borisov as Igor, Karren Karagulian as Toros, Vache Tovmasyan as Garnick, Ivy Wolk as Crystal, Luna Sofia Miranda, Alena Gurevich as Clara. The film is currently unavailable to wider audiences, but it is scheduled for a theatrical release later this year, although we don’t have a date for you just yet. But, if you want to know, be sure to keep following us, as we are definitely going to provide you with all the updates.

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