Anora director Sean Baker writes the ending first

Sean Baker's film Anora won the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival - the latest in the director's acclaimed narratives about sex workers that include Tangerine, The Florida Project, and Red Rocket. But Anora might be his most inviting, accessible work yet.

Anora - or Ani, as she prefers - is a lap dancer at a gentlemen's club who finds a way out of sex work after she meets the son of a wealthy Russian oligarch named Vanya. Ani (Mikey Madison) and Vanya (Mark Eidelstein) elope, and suddenly a life that used to involve pleasing drunk clients has turned into one of luxury: a mansion to live in, money to spend, and diamonds to wear. But the excesses prove to be fleeting when Ani realizes Vanya has not been entirely forthcoming.

I talked with Sean after Anora's debut at the New York Film Festival to discuss how he finds his stories, the power of women in his filmography, and how to make a medium-budget film look like a big-budget film.

The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity:

When did you know Anora was going to be the next film that you wanted to make?

There was this eureka moment, where we figured out the main plot. My team was working with a consultant who had more to do with the Russian American community than the sex work community. We were exploring this idea of this young woman who something happened to, something in which she was held as collateral by the Russian mafia because her deadbeat husband owed money. She started to realize, over the course of about 24 hours, that her husband was not the guy she thought she married because he didn't come to the rescue. Suddenly, she started to gravitate toward the men, her captors, in sort of a Stockholm syndrome thing.