With ‘Anora,’ Sean Baker’s moment has arrived. N.J. director on the movie eyeing Oscar gold.

In the sparkling new film “Anora,” an exhilarating high meets a sobering reality.

Anora — “Ani” — is a young Brooklyn sex worker whose quickie Vegas marriage to the son of a Russian oligarch fuels a singular thrill. As the couple dashes to the Little White Chapel, the night is music and the future seems wide open.

When his parents find out, Ani from Brighton Beach is left to deal with the consequences. (Don’t worry about spoilers — that’s just the setup.)

But for director Sean Baker, there has been no morning after, no cold light of day.

“Anora” has just been one thrill after another.

In May, the filmmaker from New Jersey was ecstatic over the film’s big win at the Cannes Film Festival in France, where it received the Palme d’Or, the top prize. Now “Anora,” playing in Jersey theaters starting Thursday (Oct. 31), is at the forefront of the Oscar conversation. The brilliant lead performance from star Mikey Madison has her on just about everyone’s best actress list, and Baker is being eyed for best picture, director and screenplay.

“It really feels great because I honestly never expected anything after,” he tells NJ Advance Media.

“I always thought ‘Oh, OK, so we won the Palme d’Or. I can now just sleep nicely at night,’” Baker says, laughing.

“I never really thought about this and I didn’t think forward to the release and the possible campaign. And so it’s nice that it’s playing out this way, and especially for my cast and crew. Mikey is getting a lot of attention and that’s really all I care about. I don’t care about my own stuff, quite honestly. I care about my cast and crew getting the recognition they deserve ... so if Mikey is on her way to possibly being recognized by the Academy, hey, that would be incredible, incredible.”

It’s the dream reception for any film.

For Baker, a gem of independent film for more than 20 years — known for standout films like “The Florida Project” (2017), “Tangerine” (2015) and “Red Rocket” (2021) — it’s a new echelon of awards season love.

It’s true that his films have not gone unrecognized. Willem Dafoe was nominated for an Oscar for his performance in “The Florida Project,” while “Red Rocket” was nominated for the Palme d’Or and picked up an Independent Spirit Award for Simon Rex’s lead performance.

Baker’s movie “Starlet” (2012), led by Dree Hemingway, won the Independent Spirit Robert Altman Award. “Tangerine,” famously filmed on three iPhones, won an audience award at the Gotham Awards, with transgender actor Mya Taylor making history with her award-winning performance (best supporting female, Independent Spirit Awards; breakthrough actor, Gotham Awards).

But the kind of warm welcome “Anora” has received is what fans have long wanted for Baker.

The director was born in Summit and grew up in Short Hills and Branchburg. He made films starting when he was a young child, and worked in a Manville movie theater as a manager and projectionist when he was in high school. He used his experiences driving a taxi in Somerville to inform his character studies in movies like “Tangerine.”

Baker’s films are lively, funny and center people from the margins of society. He dedicated his Palme d’Or win to sex workers, who are the subject of more than half of his films (”Starlet,” “Tangerine,” “The Florida Project,” “Red Rocket”).

READ MORE: Director Sean Baker on ‘Red Rocket,’ driving taxis in N.J. and why Simon Rex deserved his moment

Getting at the heart of characters and their humanity is one way the director tries to counter societal shame and ridicule heaped on people doing various jobs, whether they are sex workers, dancers, strippers, escorts or porn stars.

Baker’s movies are also beauties, prized for their dreamy skies and authentic locations.

His latest effort is, in all of these details and more, very Sean Baker.

The indie auteur wrote, helmed and edited “Anora,” a story suffused with riotous humor and an intoxicating sense of joy and freedom as well as deflating heartbreak and painful catharsis.

Finding Anora

The tale of Ani (”Annie”) plays out in several places:

Under the mood lighting of a Manhattan strip club, on a wintry Coney Island boardwalk, in the glow of the neon signs of Las Vegas, inside an unassuming Brighton Beach home and from the private driveway and sweeping views of a luxe mansion.

The film arrived Oct. 18 in New York and Los Angeles via Neon. The independent film distributor brought 2020 Oscar best picture winner “Parasite” to theaters, as well as best picture nominees “Triangle of Sadness” (2022) and “Anatomy of a Fall” (2023) — all three films won the Palme d’Or.

“Anora” is expanding in Jersey this week and nationwide in November. And this time, Baker’s film may have what it takes to charm Academy voters.

Just try to deny the twinkle in Anora’s eye.

The movie would not be what it is without Mikey Madison.

Madison, 25, not only delivers an award-worthy performance as Anora “Ani” Mikheeva, she was also the inspiration for the character.

Baker zeroed in on the actor and wrote the lead specifically for Madison. The results are stunning. The term “breakout role” doesn’t do her tremendous performance justice.

He’d seen something in Madison’s previous work that told him she was the one.

She had a role opposite Natalie Portman in the Apple TV+ drama “Lady in the Lake,” which premiered in July. From 2016 to 2022, Madison was a main cast member on the FX series “Better Things,” starring Pamela Adlon (Mikey played her character Samantha “Sam” Fox’s eldest daughter, Maxine “Max” Fox). But it was two movies that moved Baker.

Madison’s roles as Susan “Sadie” Atkins of the Manson family in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” (2019) and Amber Freeman in the “Scream” revival (2022) convinced him she was the actor to cast. In both films, she plays villains set ablaze — in the first film by Rick Dalton’s (Leonardo DiCaprio’s) flamethrower — who go out screaming.

“When you can see an actor go to those places and yet still keep it grounded and not cartoonish or not a caricature, I’m so impressed,” Baker says.

“And I was even more impressed when I met her,” he says, stifling a laugh, “and realized she’s a quiet, reserved, almost shy young woman who is so different from those roles, that she definitely wasn’t typecast. So that was actually really impressive.”

Madison’s piercing shrieks in the movies were one helpful detail, but there were others.

“She was obviously intense in both and she was able to scream ... and I needed her to scream,” he says. “But in ‘Scream,’ before she’s revealed as the killer, she is a young woman who is full of sass and attitude, and she can definitely deliver some one-liners in a wonderful way. And also she has a unique physicality.”

What happens in Vegas

Madison takes on a Brooklyn accent and a sprinkling of Russian to play Anora, a Russian American sex worker.

She’s supported by actors who bring both an authenticity and offbeat sensibility to what is billed as “a love story by Sean Baker.”

Anora’s journey to marriage and all that follows kicks off when she meets Ivan “Vanya” Zakharov, the oligarch’s son. He visits the Manhattan club where she works and asks for a woman who can speak Russian.

As played by Russian actor Mark Eydelshteyn, 22, Vanya is a good-time Charlie enthusiastic about Ani, her lap dances and the limited Russian language skills she absorbed from her grandmother. He’s far from her typical customer — young (he’s 21), almost her age (she’s 23) and deep-pocketed. He’s likable enough (the money helps), even charming enough, to book some extended time with Ani.

This son of privilege spends his days partying, playing video games and gallivanting on the boardwalk in Coney Island. He tells Ani about how he wants to stay in the United States instead of returning to Russia where he’ll have to start working for his dad. But what if he didn’t have to go back — what if he was married? “What if” turns into a plan — a Las Vegas wedding.

We get the feeling that Anora has seen a lot. She’s tough and doesn’t seem to suffer fools unless she’s with a client. Still, she’s enchanted by the chance at a fairytale, her very own Cinderella story.

The night of the Vegas wedding plays out like an absolute dopamine rush. This hyper-happy mode of the movie is set to a remix of the Take That song “Greatest Day,” which makes the film shine like the strands of tinsel adorning Ani’s hair.

Baker says he could have stopped there. If he did, “Anora” would be a much different movie.

But no, this is a story where the other shoe drops from a great height.

“The one thing about the trope of living happily ever after is that you know that life isn’t ever that,” he says.

“There’s always the day after, there’s always the coming down ... no one’s life is devoid of hardships and speed bumps and everything. Even if you are living happily ever after, it’s never gonna be perfect. And so I think that’s what I wanted to show.”

The euphoria of Ani and Vanya’s union, wrapped in the glamour of youth and money and a carefree sense of living for today, intensifies the comedown when all the glitter settles. Vanya’s parents won’t stand for the impulsive wedding (or what it means for their image in Russia). Ani is a problem to be taken care of quickly — paid off and sent packing without a fuss.

They clearly have not met Anora.

The slow burn

As much as the film sets up a fall, it also sets up a fight. Here’s where the screaming comes in.

Toros, the Zakharov family’s man in New York, is in the middle of an Armenian church service for the baptism of his godchild when he gets a call that puts him in an even more delicate situation. Rushing out of the church, he’s horrified to learn that Vanya, the kid he’s supposed to have kept in check, has gotten hitched.

Toros, played by Karren Karagulian, makes a beeline for the Zakharov mansion and dispatches two of his men: Garnik, a fellow Armenian, and Igor, a Russian hired muscle.

Baker conceived of the film as being rooted in a home invasion scene. Madison gets her screams in — and some punches — when Garnik and Igor come calling. The goal is to round up Ani and Vanya so they can get the marriage annulled, but Vanya legs it out the front door, leaving his new bride to deal with the fallout.

While the beginning of the movie is “very montage,” Baker says, the second half shifts to “slow the film down entirely into real-time action.”

The confrontation at the mansion, starring Madison, Armenian actor Vache Tovmasyan as Garnik and Russian actor Yura Borisov as Igor, shows off some comic beats, including how Ani reacts to perceived danger. (It doesn’t end well for Garnik’s face.) Igor realizes Ani would rather flail wildly than submit to the henchmen, so he ties her up.

“I want the audience to really be feeling as threatened as Ani is in that moment,” Baker says.

Something else is at play in the scene, too — a break in the usual henchman mold.

Despite being tasked with rounding up the young couple to undo their wedding, Igor congratulates Ani on the nuptials. This hired muscle is courteous, earnest and definitely not your usual paid thug (though he can destroy things with a baseball bat).

“I was always setting up stereotypes then trying to shatter them,” Baker says. “In Ani’s eyes ... we slowly get to see that, ‘oh, OK, maybe he’s not what we thought.’

“It’s a slow burn that comes, I think, especially from Yura’s incredible performance ... he’s so subtle ... If you think about it, the character Igor is even more in the dark than Ani. He has no idea what’s going on ... he’s actually figuring everything out for the first time. And in some ways, you could actually say he’s almost like an audience member because he’s kind of experiencing this as it’s playing out.”

A friendship in film

As for Toros, the Zakharov family’s fixer-slash-babysitter, he looks like he’s going to have a heart attack after learning Vanya is married.

This means he’s failed his mission to keep Vanya in line, and that his big bosses — parents Galina and Nikolai Zakharov (Darya Ekamasova and Aleksey Serebryakov) — are headed to America.

Karren Karagulian, the actor playing Toros, has been like a right-hand man to Baker for more than 25 years.

Karagulian is in all of Baker’s eight feature films, starting with his debut, “Four Letter Words” (2000).

The actor met him in the ’90s when Baker, an alum of Gladstone’s Gill St. Bernard’s School who studied at New York University and The New School, was editing a student film. They planted the seed of what became “Anora” when they were filming Baker’s third feature, “Prince of Broadway,” in 2007. The director wanted to set a story in the Russian American communities of Brighton Beach and Coney Island.

Karagulian became Baker’s consultant for what he calls the film’s “Armenian subplot” — characters speak English, Russian and Armenian.

“When he came over from Armenia in 1990, he sold caviar on the street corners of Brighton Beach, and it was his introduction to New York City,” Baker says of Karagulian. “And then he actually married a Russian American, Lana (Svidonovich), who plays his wife in the church scene.”

Truth became fiction in the church when the actor filmed the baptism where Toros gets the dreaded phone call.

“He actually was in that same spot in that same church two other times, actually performing the duties of a godfather at a baptism,” Baker says.

A postcard from Coney Island

Baker’s movies have distinct visual calling cards — they are all unmistakably of a place.

The billowing oil refineries of Texas City in “Red Rocket.” The pink-orange Hollywood sunsets of “Tangerine.” The sun-drenched LA of “Starlet.” The Easter-colored motel in Disney World’s shadow in “The Florida Project.”

“There were moments where I was really taking in just the postcard beauty of Coney Island,” Baker says of his latest’s film’s gray, Brooklyn-in-winter setting. “It really hasn’t changed. It’s been stuck in time in some ways, so I was able to just have our wide shots of the Cyclone, of Paul’s Daughter on the boardwalk, and really take in the environment.”

Baker is also known for guerilla-style filming, street casting and using first-time actors. While the stars of “Anora” are experienced, he had them approach real people in Brooklyn.

His went hybrid docu-style — “half narrative fiction, half documentary, because I was taking my actors and throwing them into real-life situations,” Baker says.

The camera would be on the street and he would have the actors go into a restaurant with wireless mics.

“We’d be shooting them ‘Candid Camera’- style through the window as they would interact with locals,” Baker says.

“I just love that ... taking advantage of real locations. I never work on a set. Why work on a set when real-life locations are just already set-designed for you, and they’re already full of life?”

Baker’s wife Samantha Quan was his partner on the film as a fellow producer after previously working with him on “Red Rocket” and “The Florida Project.” Cinematographer Drew Daniels also returned for “Anora” after working on “Red Rocket.”

In addition to Manhattan’s Headquarters “gentlemen’s club,” they filmed at The Palms Casino Resort in Vegas. To Baker, the most memorable images of the film are from Brooklyn.

One of his favorites is Ani walking the boardwalk with Igor, her red scarf tied around her neck (the accessory gets a lot of mileage in the film, for various reasons).

“Even though the two Armenians are supposed to be right near them, they feel alone in a good way,” he says.

Another enduring picture for Baker is when Ani looks out the large windows at the Zakharov mansion. She admires the view of the water and the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway beyond.

Baker returns to those windows later in the story.

“She’s by herself on her last morning at the mansion, looking out at the exact same framing, but this time the snow is falling in the morning,” he says. “I think those images really say ‘Anora.’”

The movie isn’t confined to a single mood.

”It’s humor in a wide shot, tragedy in a close-up,” Baker says, paraphrasing the old film maxim.

He stays figuratively wide for much of “Anora,” using comedy to let the absurdity of real life come through. Physical comedy does the job as Ani strikes back against the story’s “bumbling henchmen” and holds her own as Vanya, the spoiled rich kid, flees the scene.

“The bird’s-eye view of that is crazy and absurd and funny,” Baker says. “When you zoom in on this young woman’s pain and what she’s going through ... then it’s a tragedy.”

“Anora,” rated R (for strong sexual content throughout, graphic nudity, pervasive language and drug use), runs 2 hours and 18 minutes and is playing in New Jersey theaters starting Thursday, Oct. 31.

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Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com and followed at @AmyKup.