I begin this compilation of 12 films that herald and embody biopolitics (a concept borrowed from late French philosopher Michel Foucault), and which have impacted me the most in the past 20 years, with a very intimate and indeed political movie.

A biopolitical dirty movie exposes, interrogates, and deconstructs the dynamics of cinema by highlighting mechanisms of control, exclusion, and resistance. These films not only reflect how bodies and populations are monitored and managed but – most importantly explore the paradoxes, cracks, and fissures of the society of control. Employing raw aesthetics, visceral imagery, and gritty narratives – when compared to more polished cinema – they capture the precariousness of existence under the technologies of power. From 2004 onward, each selected title breathes resistance, portraying lives that confront micropowers and the society of control. I start in reverse order (from the least impactful to the most impactful) with Sean Baker’s Anora (2024).

More than a film, Anora is an act of ontological insurrection, poetics confronting the socius in its entrails, vices, abysses, torrents, and deserts. Sean Baker’s film does not merely tell a story; it unveils with surgical precision and devastating lyricism the subtle and brutal mechanisms that shape and discipline bodies. Anora speaks of precarious lives while also embodying them, transforming cinema into a battlefield where filth, vulnerability, and insubordination merge into a fiercely political manifesto.

For its courage in confronting what pulses in the cracks of existence, Anora emerges as a rough poem, a whispered denunciation, and a choked bard, translating the struggles of “anomalous bodies” into images of unbearable beauty. This choice transcends personal taste, inscribing itself into the desire to map a cinematography that lays bare the imperceptible layers of the social, exploring the power of the lived on the margins – the deviants, the maladjusted, the politically untamed.

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Shady romance

Anora is not merely a story of ascension or desire, but a reflection on the struggle for autonomy and identity. Throughout her journey, Ani reconstructs herself in the fabric of the city, where the shine of the surface hides the deep cuts of survival. The art direction and cinematography are the primary vehicles for this transformation, creating a visual contrast between the opulent spaces and dark environments, just as Ani’s inner struggle to find herself unfolds. In the end, the film challenges us to reconsider the value of our choices: how far do we go for love, how far do we go for survival, and what remains of us when the choices we make define us forever.

The camerawork alternates between close-ups and wide shots, capturing Ani’s inner tension as she navigates the shadows of the city, contrasted with the harsh, saturated lights of clubs and hotel rooms. The cold, harsh lighting in scenes of her work provides a vivid contrast to the warmer, more cinematic tones during moments with Ivan, as if the camera, too, wants to believe in the romance. But always with a shadow of uncertainty. The art direction follows the same tension: the environments Ani frequents — from the Headquarters Gentleman’s Club to Ivan’s luxurious apartments — are marked by contrasts. In the club, the details are dark, with worn furniture and mirrors that distort Ani’s image, reflecting her own distortion. In Ivan’s apartment, the cold opulence is imposing, revealing the disconnection between the worlds of privilege and the struggles Ani and Ivan navigate.

This dramedy transcends the boundaries of entertainment in order to become a potent allegory of the American Dream and its fractures. Under the masterful hand of Sean Baker, the narrative unfolds around Anora Mikheeva, portrayed intensely by Mikey Madison, a young dancer teetering on the social abyss in Brighton Beach, New York. In an act as romantic as it is desperate, she ties her fate to Ivan Zakharov, heir to a Russian oligarchic dynasty, played with equal potency by Mark Eydelshteyn. However, the marriage, which should have been a refuge of stability, quickly becomes a minefield when Ivan’s parents, wielding the weight of their power and prejudice, arrive to dissolve the union and reassert the supremacy of their world.

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Verbal violence

In a moment of indescribable tension, when Ivan’s parents arrive in New York with the intention of annulling the marriage, Ani’s fantasy crumbles. Confronted by thugs and powerful family structures, she must fight against invisible forces controlling her destiny. The dialogues are sharp, punctuated by verbal violence. This reflects the unyielding transactions of the protagonist’s life. The conversations between Ani and Ivan, filled with subtext, speak not only of love or commitment, but of a mutual search for redemption, trying to escape the realities life has imposed on them. The exchange of dialogues between Ani and the thugs demonstrates her silent resistance, where, instead of shouting or asking for help, Ani negotiates her survival with strategic cunning, subverting the violence surrounding her.

Above all, Anora is a portrayal of the tensions between the desire for belonging and individual integrity – a visual song that turns the wreckage of an improbable relationship into a mosaic of resistance and self-discovery. Celebrated at the Cannes Film Festival with the Palme d’Or, the film resonates as a biopolitical anthem that, between laughter and tears, remains an act of revolt against normativity, inviting viewers into the fissures of the contemporary.

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Unsettling mosaic

This narrative is a latticework of unfinished gestures, a fabric that tears and mends at the whim of desire and pain. The shadows accompanying her, both literal and metaphorical, denounce the constant surveillance of a society intent on subjugating deviant bodies, erasing subjectivities that refuse to conform to its rules. Yet Anora, in her vulnerability, is also a rebel. Her refusals, her silences, and her deviations are acts of freedom, resisting erasure with a force only oppression can forge.

Watching Anora, we are confronted with the discomfort of facing precariousness without averting our gaze, recognising that dirt – social, political, emotional – is an inseparable part of what makes us human. Anora demands, incites, and unsettles viewers. It compels us to reconsider the structures shaping our own bodies, desires, and power relations. In doing so, Anora transcends its existence as a work of art to become, itself, a biopolitical manifesto – a language of freedom echoing far beyond the screen.

Cinema is a territory of resistance. Dirt here is not decadence but fertility instead. Vulnerable lives germinate like impossible flowers in the concrete of biopower. It is this insistence on creating new grammars of existence that prepares us for the next gestures of insubordination that the concept of biopolitical dirty movie still promises to reveal.