Editor’s Picks: Give ‘Anora’ All the Oscars

Frieze Editor’s Picks is a fortnightly column in which a frieze editor shares their recommendations for what to watch, read and listen to.

Sean Baker, Anora (2024)

The promotional materials for Anora call it a love story but, in reality, the film chronicles the aftermath of a rash decision made in the throes of mutual infatuation. It opens with the titular character, whose real name is Anni (Mikey Madison), dancing at a strip club in Manhattan, where she meets the son of a Russian oligarch, Ivan (a pitch-perfect Mark Eydelshteyn), who immediately takes a liking to her. One ‘girlfriend experience’ later, he proposes before whisking Anni away to Las Vegas in a breakneck sequence that’s a joy to watch. When Ivan’s parents find out about the marriage and send a group of heavies to force them to have it annulled, the entire mood of the film turns darker, with Anni effectively kidnapped by the trio after her feckless new husband runs away. Madison is excellent throughout – sweet but tough, innocent yet world-weary – in a role that, if there is any justice in the world, should win her the Academy Award for Best Actress. In fact, give Anora all the Oscars! To my mind, it deserves awards for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay for Sean Baker, whose sensitive portrayals of people on the fringes of society have been ignored by the Academy for too long.

Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal and Rachel Szor, No Other Land (2024)

After failing to find a distributor in the US, the Palestinian-Israeli collective behind No Other Land – a film depicting the destruction of the occupied West Bank’s Masafer Yatta villages by the Israeli Defence Force – recently announced that they will self-distribute the documentary, a year after it debuted at the Berlinale, where it won both the Documentary Award and the Panorama Audience Award for Best Documentary Film. I urge you to seek it out, not only because the film addresses an important topic but also because it is very well-made. I expected No Other Land to be a hard watch, and it is, but I was unprepared for how funny it is, too, finding lightness in the darkest of situations. By focusing on the family of co-director Basel Adra, and a small group of villagers, the film allows viewers to feel like we are getting to know its protagonists, thereby connecting us more deeply with their plight. Some of the most tender moments come between Adra (a Palestinian) and fellow co-director Yuval Abraham (an Israeli), as their friendship deepens and they reckon with the huge chasm in their lived experience.

The Libertines on tour

After posting the indie sleaze-inspired outfit I planned to wear to see The Libertines earlier this week on Instagram, one 20-something friend commented that ‘he sometimes forgets I’m a millennial’. Well, if being a millennial is wrong, I don’t want to be right. I had so much fun at this nostalgia-fest, which took me back to the early 2000s, when nothing was cooler than wearing a bright-red Libertines military jacket to an indie night. It was my first time seeing the band live, but it was my third time seeing Pete Doherty on stage. Both other times, the singer was in the throes of a well-documented substance use disorder, so to see him here, sober, chubby and seemingly at peace, was genuinely moving. The feeling of screaming along to ‘Can’t Stand Me Now’ (2004) as we got shoved around in the mosh pit was so cathartic that my friend and I joked afterwards we’d saved ourselves a year of therapy. I may have left the show hoarse and covered in bruises, but I was smiling from ear to ear.

_{Main image: Sean Baker, Anora, 2024, film still. Courtesy: Neon}