Fantastic Five! Neon Makes It Five Palme d’Or Winners In A Row As ‘Anora’ Scoops Cannes Top Prize

Andreas Wiseman
·2 min read

It just had to be, didn’t it.

U.S. distributor Neon only had two movies in the Competition: Anora and The Seed of the Sacred Fig. Neither could have fared any better with the critics and both won prizes tonight.

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It was Sean Baker’s Anora that stormed to the top prize on the Riviera, making it a remarkable five Palme d’Or wins in a row for Tom Quinn’s outfit Neon.

“The future of cinema is where it started: in a movie theater,” said Baker, accepting his Palme d’Or. You can watch the acceptance speech below.

Justine Triet’s Anatomy Of A Fall won last year, following the US distributor’s previous acquisitions Triangle Of Sadness, Titane and Parasite.

New York-set romantic dramedy Anora is about a stripper from Brooklyn who transforms into a modern Cinderella when she meets the son of a Russian oligarch.

Better Things and Scream actress Mikey Madison plays the eponymous Anora alongside Yuriy Borisov, who previously appeared in Cannes pics Petrov’s Flu and Compartment No.6 both in 2021. The cast also includes Mark Eydelshteyn, Karren Karagulian and Vache Tovmasyan.

Remarkably, before it screened at this year’s Cannes Film Festival a couple of well-placed industry we spoke to were not high on Anora‘s chances of winning the Palme d’Or, once again proving the timeless axiom: “Nobody knows anything”.

Except Neon when it comes to Cannes, of course.

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