Well, to tell you the truth, there hasn’t been a tremendous amount of offers. And I think it’s because I’ve made it quite clear – I mean, I was on the stage talking to supposedly a billion people saying, “Indie film forever!” I have gotten some nice calls from A-listers seeing if I want to work with them, and that’s been very sweet. I don’t want to follow this with a film that completely goes off the rails and I waste $100
million of other people’s money.
If you’re not driven by awards, what draws you to the stories you want to tell?
I’m trying to make films I would like to see in the cinema. I definitely play in a certain wheelhouse and I find constant inspiration there. This is not just about sex work, it’s more about people who are pursuing the American dream but not given easy access to it. They’re human stories and hopefully no matter what culture or microcosm I’m focusing on, the story is universal enough in nature that anybody around the globe can identify with it.
Was your success a broader win for independent cinema?
My fear was that theatres are becoming just a place to go see action movies, or superhero movies, and that’s it. Everything else people are OK with seeing at home: character studies, family dramas. The advent of streaming and Covid started to paint that picture. But now we’re seeing that’s not the truth. Look at this year’s Oscars. Many other indie films were celebrated. We are presenting something that people aren’t getting from mainstream films that people still desire to see on the big screen.
A 4K UHD and Blu-ray has just been released. Is there still a market for physical media?
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It’s shrunk, obviously, but it’s still going strong. Die-hard fans and consumers appreciate a hard copy they can have in their collection, that has stuff you can’t get online – extras and beautiful artwork. Criterion listened to me in terms of how I wanted to market this film. Because, you know, it does ride the line between political social satire, a social realist movie, screwball comedy, even perhaps a sexploitation movie. I was thinking how would Anora be marketed if it was made in the 70s – because it’s so inspired by and influenced by films of the 70s. It would probably be marketed as – not a hardcore adult film – but a film made for adults that was risqué in nature and we really played into that.
Social realist films are rarely funny – why are people on the margins not allowed to be funny?
But if you look at the earlier works of Ken Loach, there’s actually a lot of humour in his social realism. Films like Kes or Riff-Raff. I remember really laughing out loud with some of those scenarios, even though overall, his films could be seen as tragedies. British kitchen sink realism had humour. It was behavioural humour, the way people interact, the way humans treat one another. If it comes across as authentic, I see myself in those interactions, then I’m kind of laughing at myself.
It’s hard to see past the bird dying at the end of Kes.
And many people say that about Anora, too. I had somebody come up to me and say, I was laughing throughout the whole film and then I got to the end and I was wondering why I was laughing earlier on! In the end, there has to be some emotional catharsis. When I look at all my favourite films, they all have moved me in one sense or another. That’s all I truly care about.
Because your films reflect real life, do you see different things reflected in them as the world keeps turning?
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I’m doing my best to make contemporary films. So many of my peers are, understandably, making period pieces because, quite honestly, as far as drama goes, it’s easier and sometimes more interesting to tell a story from another era because cellphones and technology truly kill screenwriting. Almost any problem can be solved by somebody picking up a phone. The reason I bring it up is because I hope in the future my films are time capsules. Anora will say a lot about our times, especially with US/Russian relations. How this film will be viewed 10 years from now, I have no idea, but I’m very interested in seeing it.
Anora is out now on Criterion Collection 4K UHD and Blu-ray.
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