Sean Baker Says His Next Movie Is A “Love Letter” To ‘60s & ‘70s Italian Sex Comedies

“Anora” director Sean Baker is at the Berlin International Film Festival with a new short film called “Sandiwara” that has Oscar-winning actress Michelle Yeoh (“Everything Everywhere All At Once”) getting the chance to play multiple characters in a colorful story set in Penang, and the filmmaker is already giving some minor clues about what his next feature is going to be about.

In a new interview with Variety, Baker suggests his next feature-length effort (after winning a slew of Oscars for “Anora,” including Best Director and Best Picture) will be a “love letter” of sorts to the Italian sex comedies of the 1960s and 1970s.

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“Oh, yeah. It’s my love letter to the Italian sex comedies of the ’60s and ’70s, so I’m leaning into that. We want to shoot this year,” Baker told Variety. But Baker stopped short of commenting on their question about Italian actress Vera Gemma appearing in the untitled project and didn’t name which specific movies would inspire his latest romp.

Baker is also revealing that he wants to make the movie independently, but remains hopeful that NEON will pick it up after production, as the two may reunite, and we imagine the distributor will be very patient after the success of their last pairing.

“I was offered development deals, but I very much want to make my films independently. I mean, it would be amazing if Neon in the States would distribute my film again. I’d love to work with them again so much. But we are making our film independently so that I can retain full control over everything from casting to content, and not even have to take one note because that drives me up the wall. It’s like, why?”

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If you’re looking for touchstones, many of these films of that era starred Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren and were directed by people like Vittorio De Sica (“Marriage Italian Style,” “Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow”), Pietro Germi (“Seduced and Abandoned,” “The Birds, the Bees and the Italians”), Carlo Ponti (“Casanova 70”), Lina Wertmüller (“The Seduction of Mimi,” “Love and Anarchy,” plus 1962’s anthology film “Boccaccio ’70 “featuring filmmakers like Federico Fellini, De Sica and Luchino Visconti.

Aiming to make a sex comedy isn’t such a huge surprise, as Sean Baker’s “Anora” mixed dramatic and dark comedy elements within the world of sex workers. Could we be looking at an Italian-set project? That remains to be seen, since Baker isn’t dishing those kinds of details, but we’re sure that once things get going and financing is secured, more information will be publicly revealed.