Modern Whore is a documentary that recreates the experiences of sex worker, Andrea Werhun. Her work consulting on Anora and writing with director Nicole Bazuin leads to a break down of her personal stories along with those who have worked in different parts of the sex worker industry. What the film reveals is a very different perspective on sex than we are used to as we see the plights of awkward dates, threatening men and unique people as they are scaled up in an industry that brings people together at their most vulnerable.
Werhun never fails to address the many horrors that can happen (and have happened) to sex workers. However, she asserts that sex work is simply a micro lens into the experience that so many women have in almost every industry run by men. With that knowledge though, she still works hard with Bazuin to bring her sense of humour into the film. She cracks jokes directly to the audience and is unashamed to describe some of these most awkward or bizarre experiences that she’s had in her time working. She gives an honest voice to the capitalistic gains of being in the industry and why a person can enjoy and want to stay.
The film has explicit and, thus, honest recreations of what happened to Werhun, as well as some very creative do-it-yourself animation. The result is a film that feels like a person note, a memoir of experiences. The film plays with the basic archetypes that sex workers have been given in film and parodies them. Along with simplistic but expressive production design and color grading choices, we get a non-stop storytelling feast. Each story builds upon the overall nuance of the documentary and, by bringing in other voices from the sex worker community, we also get insight to the diverse experiences that occur and how the issues of gender and identity become more complicated in such a personal industry. Whore is an educational but also entertaining film that appeals to empathy in the right way.
Modern Whore is playing at TIFF ’25. For more information, click here.
