Erotic dancer comedy-drama ‘Anora’ wins top prize at Cannes

“Anora”, a raw, highly explicit and often hilarious story about a New York erotic dancer, was awarded the Palme d’Or at the 77th Cannes Film Festival on Saturday. One of the leading voices of American indie cinema, its director Sean Baker dedicated the film to all sex workers. A trans woman won best actress for the first time, as Karla Sofia Gascon took the award for the audacious musical “Emilia Perez”, in which she plays a Mexican narco boss who becomes a woman. And “Star Wars” creator George Lucas received an honorary Palme d’Or from his old friend Francis Ford Coppola, who competed this year with the highly divisive “Megalopolis”.