“I want to thank the sex worker community. They have shared their stories. They have shared their life experience with me over the years. My deepest respect. Thank you; I share this with you.” So said filmmaker Sean Baker (Tangerine, The Florida Project) onstage at the 2025 Oscars on Sunday, as he collected the best original screenplay award for his film Anora.
While Baker’s portrait of Ani—a Brighton Beach stripper who, struggling to make ends meet, impulsively marries the son of a Russian oligarch—has drawn mixed reviews from critics familiar with strip-club culture and sex work more broadly, the fanfare around Anora shows no signs of slowing down, especially after its five Oscar wins (including one for star Mikey Madison).
Curious to learn more about the community it depicts? Here are seven films, both documentary and narrative, that delve deep into the personal and cultural ramifications of sex work.
The Stroll, directed by Kristen Lovell and Zackary Drucker, 2023
This moving documentary, which premiered at Sundance in 2023, spotlights the stories of Black and Latina trans women who engaged in sex work in New York City’s Meatpacking District during the 1980s and 1990s—among them Amanda Milan, who was attacked and killed by two men in Times Square in 2000. A final shot of G.L.I.T.S. founder Ceyenne Doroshow speaking at the Brooklyn Liberation rally in 2020 underscores how the fight for trans rights and visibility rages on.
