Warning: This article contains spoilers for Anora.

Anora, the story of a New York City sex worker’s whirlwind marriage to the aloof son of a Russian oligarch, is an awards juggernaut.

After winning the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, Sean Baker‘s film nabbed six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay. Stars Mikey Madison and Yura Borisov, meanwhile, are also nominated for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor, respectively. What’s more, Anora scored notable wins at the Film Independent Spirit Awards, the Critics Choice Awards, and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards.

The film has proven divisive, though, with some audiences puzzled by its breakneck tonal shifts and ambiguous ending.

What’s going on with Madison’s Ani and Borisov’s Igor in the final scene? And why does she break down into tears? Read on as Entertainment Weekly answers those questions and more with this Anora ending explainer.

What is Anora about?

Anora follows its namesake character (though she goes by “Ani”), a 23-year-old exotic dancer and sex worker living in the Brighton Beach neighborhood of Brooklyn, which is home to a high population of Russian immigrants. One night, Ani, who can speak a bit of Russian herself, is introduced to Ivan “Vanya” Zakharov (Mark Eydelshteyn) by her boss. The son of a Russian oligarch, Vanya is immature, perpetually stoned, and supposed to be using his time in the States to study. Instead, he’s partying on his parents’ dime.

He takes a liking to Ani and begins paying her for sex, showing her off at parties, and bringing her with him on whirlwind trips. He eventually floats the idea of them getting married, noting that this way he can get a green card and avoid returning home to work for his father. Ani, swept up in his life of luxury and spontaneity, agrees and moves into his mansion.

Their union doesn’t bode well with Vanya’s parents, who decide to fly out to the U.S. In the meantime, they order Toros (Karren Karagulian), Vanya’s godfather, and his goons, Garnik (Vache Tovmasyan) and Igor (Borisov), to force Vanya and Ani to annul their marriage. Vanya absconds from the house, leaving Ani, who surprises Toros with her strength and invective. She refuses the annulment, even after they offer her $10,000 to end the marriage, declaring that she and Vanya are in love.

Still, they need to find Vanya, so the four embark on a dizzying descent into Brooklyn’s nightlife in search of the Russian failson.

What happens at the end of Anora?

Once they find Vanya, he’s too drunk to speak. Ani remains resistant to the annulment, and Toros’ attempt to initiate it is rejected by the court since the couple was married in Nevada, not New York.

Ani and Vanya are then driven to the airport, where Vanya’s parents, Nikolai (Aleksei Serebryakov) and Galina (Darya Ekamasova) are waiting with a private jet. Ani, still believing there’s a chance for her and Vanya, is crestfallen when she’s rejected by the oligarch and his wife. Vanya, meanwhile, curtly agrees that he, too, wants to end the marriage, infuriating Ani.

Since Ani didn’t sign a prenuptial agreement, she threatens to divorce him and get her share of his fortune. She’s swiftly dissuaded of that by Galina, who makes it very clear how she and her husband can destroy Ani’s life. Igor, an outlier who’s treated Ani tenderly throughout the ordeal, boldly asks that Vanya apologize to her. Galina says her son doesn’t need to apologize to anyone.

Igor is tasked with taking Ani back to New York. She remains rude to him, but after he gives her the money Toros promised and returns her wedding ring, the weight of the last 48 hours catches up to her. She chooses to have sex with him, but when he grabs her face and tries to kiss her, she flinches and pulls back. The film ends with her crying in his arms.

What does the end of Anora mean?

Baker himself has said the ending of Anora was “designed in a way that allows for different interpretations.” Some have interpreted it as Ani realizing that she has feelings for the kindly Igor, despite his low standing compared to someone like Vanya. Others see her breakdown as an existential crisis in which the experience has compromised her ability to resist genuine intimacy as a sex worker. Neither of those feel right to us, though.

Baker’s previous films, including The Florida Project (2017) and Red Rocket (2021), have a lot to say about class and exploitation, and these themes also surface in Anora‘s ending.

While one could interpret Ani and Igor’s union in the final moments to be romantic in nature, that clashes with the fact that the Ani doesn’t seem to desire love so much as status, stability, and a sense of ownership over her life and body. There’s no genuine spark between her and Vanya, after all. It’s not him she’s wooed by, but rather his lifestyle and the possibilities afforded by his wealth and social standing. Baker doesn’t judge her for this. Rather, he understands that the gulf between 1% and the 99% is vast, and the working class longs to have the same sense of freedom and power as the ruling class.

Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Madison described Ani and Vanya’s union as a “fairy-tale relationship,” bringing to mind stories like Cinderella and Snow White, in which women of meager means are romanced into lives of opulence and royalty. “I’ve heard a couple of people refer to her as ‘cynical,’ but personally I never felt that way about her when I was playing her,” she said. “I think that she actually is quite hopeful in a lot of ways. She sees this opportunity to have this fairy-tale relationship, and I think she just takes it because why not?”

So, why does Ani have sex with Igor? That answer, as Baker told EW, is “complex.”

First off, it’s important to remember that the physical and emotional chaos of the last 48 hours only really seem to register for Ani as she and Igor sit outside her apartment in the final scene. She’s realizing the ways she was exploited and so casually tossed aside by Vanya, not to mention how insignificant Vanya’s parents made her feel. (Some interpret the disdain Vanya’s parents have for her being due to her job as a sex worker; that’s part of it, but it’s likely they’d treat anyone outside of their tax bracket similarly.)

In the film’s final moments, she’s able to see Igor as a kindred spirit. As a henchmen in Nikolai and Galina’s orbit, he is, like her, a laborer being exploited by the same people. That realization helps her understand just how powerless she’s been made to feel by Vanya, his parents, and their employees. She initiates sex with him to remind herself that she still has power of her own.

Baker touched on this while speaking with Indiewire. “I do see [the sex] being about her and not really something that she’s giving to him but something in which she’s now regaining the power that she lost entirely throughout this journey,” he said.

When Igor touches her face and pulls her mouth to his, she resists because he’s trying to take that power away. Baker added, “We’re playing with different themes, and one of them is consent, and when he then tries to kiss her in that moment, that’s crossing a line for her. It’s like, ‘No, I’m in control of this moment.’”

Why was Anora crying at the end?

After having sex with Igor and slapping him when he tries to kiss her, Ani breaks down sobbing in his arms.

Why does she react that way? It could be as simple as the pain and exhaustion of the previous 48 hours overwhelming her. But, extrapolating on that, it could also be her realization that she came so close to escaping her life as a laborer, only to end up back where she began. There’s no place for her (or Igor) among the 1%.

Baker also revealed that her tears evoke one of the film’s influences, Frederico Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria, which ends with a sex worker shedding a tear after being attacked and exploited by a man she thought truly loved her.

“This magical moment happened,” Baker told Indiewire. “I don’t know if you remember ‘Nights of Cabiria,’ but in the last shot, she has this single tear. I just remember being in the backseat and leaning over to see if the tears were coming, and [Madison] does this one single tear, and I was just like, ‘Oh my god, I can’t believe we’re doing this unintentional nod to the film that actually inspired it.’”

Where can I watch Anora?

Anora is currently available to rent or buy via Amazon Prime or AppleTV+.

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