By Sarah Grishpul

“It’s high time we told our own damn stories. Here’s mine.”

In the shimmering painted skyline of Toronto, we descend into the staged home of our storyteller; Andrea Werhun, ready to set the record straight on the reality of being a sex worker.

Modern Whore (2025) is the debut feature film from Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) image arts graduate Nicole Bazuin, which had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) back in September 2025. The documentary stars Andrea Werhun, Bazuin’s friend of over 10 years, who shares her experience working as an escort and stripper in Toronto.

If the name “Andrea Werhun” sounds familiar, it’s likely because you’ve heard her story before. She worked as a script consultant on the Oscar best picture-winning film Anora, which follows a Brooklyn stripper—played by Mikey Madison who took home the Academy Award for best actress—as she falls in love with the wealthy son of a Russian oligarch.

Bazuin met Werhun in 2011 on the set of a music video Bauzin was directing where they both played go-go dancers; the two eventually decided to collaborate on a book about Werhun’s life titled Modern Whore: A Memoir with Bazuin’s photography lining the pages. While initially self-published in 2018, the pair adapted the story into two short films in 2020, Modern Whore and Last Night at the Strip Club and a second edition of the book with Penguin Random House in 2022.

“We started as a team of two who had a dream of making some interesting art together, and from the beginning both being multi-hyphenate artists, we had ambitions that this could be a multimedia project,” said Bazuin.

The latest addition to the Modern Whore cinematic universe (MWCU) is bright, playful and serious when it needs to be. Werhun and Bazuin expressed in an interview with The Eyeopener that humour was a key element in the storytelling.

“I think that typically it’s sort of been outside the scope of the civilian imagination to imagine [sex workers] as funny or to imagine us as being able to make jokes,” said Werhun. “Because 99 per cent of the depictions that we see of sex work is so dour and sad.”

For Bazuin, it made sense for the tone and aesthetic of the story to have a “pop art vibe,” with many scenes taking inspiration from Hollywood feminine icons such as Dolly Parton in 9 to 5, Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Mary Tyler Moore from The Mary Tyler Moore Show. While this film isn’t one to shy away from full frontal nudity, the female gaze is prevalent within each shot.

“Additionally, this is Andrea’s story, and it felt right that the telling should involve a style that matches her bubbly, charismatic personality,” added Bazuin.

As fun as it is, Modern Whore isn’t afraid to approach some of the darker realities of the industry, addressing the inequalities and harmful stereotypes sex workers experience due to the criminalization of their labour.

In 2014 under the Harper government, Parliament passed a legislation titled Bill C-36, the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act, which prohibited the purchase of sexual services. With the legal framework transitioning to prop up purchasers of sexual services as ‘predators,’ sex workers were now seen in the eyes of the law as ‘victims.’

According to a supplementary publication from the Library of Parliament, these prostitution laws sought to regulate sexual services between consenting adults.
“People use all sorts of body parts to do their labour and we’re not concerned about it unless it’s sexual,” Werhun pointed out in the film.

The film addressed the social framing of sex workers as either victims—with no ability to make their own choices—or villains—who make bad and harmful choices. Throughout the documentary, Werhun and her peers discussed the role criminalization plays in contributing to the dangers of sex work—particularly from a labour perspective.

“I hope that audiences feel in their bones the necessity for labour rights for sex workers, that we should be entitled to occupational health and safety,” said Werhun.

“We should have the right to be able to unionize. We need access to collective bargaining when it comes to our employers, and none of that is possible if our work remains criminalized,” she continued.

During the film, Werhun brought up several moments in her career when she needed basic labour rights. Being verbally, physically and emotionally assaulted by clients, the lack of information surrounding sexually transmitted infection testing and agencies not being transparent with their workers about blacklisted clients. For Werhun and her fellow workers, it’s not so much sex work that is oppressing them—but the stigma that follows.

Throughout the film, Werhun admits that even though she was happy, fulfilled and raking in cash, she was constantly haunted by this underlying feeling of shame regarding her acts. Werhun’s mother and boyfriend are brought onto screen in the documentary, reassuring both her and the audience that she is loved and supported. It’s moments like these where we get to peel back the layers of Werhun’s humanity, relating to her as a daughter, a disgruntled worker, a partner and a friend.

Werhun expressed that she hoped audiences would come away from the film with open minds and open hearts toward sex workers.

“I want them to feel perhaps for the first time in their lives that they’re relating to a sex worker, that they have something in common with sex workers,” she said. “And most importantly, that our human rights should be respected and that we should be treated as equals.”