“In books, movies, and every syndicated crime drama imaginable, sex workers are typically portrayed as victims or villains,” Andrea Werhun remarks. “It’s high time we told our own damn stories.” Through cheeky, stylized reenactments, colourful animated sequences, and hilarious sendups of her sexual encounters, memoirist Andrea Werhun recounts the joys and pitfalls of her experiences as an escort and stripper in Toronto. Along the way, she debunks misconceptions about the world’s oldest profession, reconceptualizing the archetype of the Modern Whore.
By turns earnest and riotously entertaining, this documentary feature expands on director Nicole Bazuin and performer and co-writer Andrea Werhun’s (recognizable for her charismatic turn in Sook-Yin Lee’s 2024 film Paying for It) book and short film of the same name. Werhun interviews a diverse community of sex workers and dancers, exploring their professions’ risks and rewards. Modern Whore is a revealing film that exposes the silencing effects of shame and stigma, a culture that fetishizes trauma, and the vulnerabilities that underlie a lack of labour protections.
Oct 9 & 11: Q&A
Presented by
Media Partner
Community Partner
Andrea Werhun
Canada
2025
English
Sexual violence, gender or sexual discrimination
Book Tickets
Credits & Director
Executive Producer
Sean Baker, Berry Meyerowitz, Jeff Sackman, James J. Yi, Amir Endalah, John Laing, Mark Gingras, Terry King, Martha Loewen, Alex Kingsmill, Justin Stockman
Producer
Lauren Grant, Nicole Bazuin, Andrea Werhun
Screenwriter
Nicole Bazuin, Andrea Werhun
Cinematography
Nina Djacic
Editor
Nicole Bazuin
Production Design
Chareese Steinhoff
Original Music
Tom Third
Nicole Bazuin
Nicole Bazuin is an award-winning filmmaker and artist from Toronto. She directed the short films Thriving: A Dissociated Reverie, which premiered at Sundance and was named in TIFF’s Canada’s Top Ten list for 2023; Modern Whore (2020), which premiered at SXSW; and the CBC Short Doc Last Night at the Strip Club (2020); as well as digital series for CBC Arts and The Image Centre. Bazuin co-created and photographed the book Modern Whore: A Memoir (2022), and has exhibited her art at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Luminato, and Nuit Blanche. Modern Whore (2025) is her first feature film.
Filmography: Thriving: A Dissociated Reverie (2023)
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
NAZA
NAZA is a codeword euphemistically used by Israeli intelligence to indicate the number of civilians it expects will be killed in an airstrike. This chilling documentary exposes the policy and process of state-sanctioned mass killings.
The Sandbox
Borders are the faultlines of the world. Kenya-Jade Pinto's doc examines how modern surveillance technology, bio-metrics and AI are combining to make land and sea borders as impenetrable as air travel, and suggests the unspoken cost is our own humanity.
Atonement
A former Marine suffering from PTSD seeks a meeting with the Iraqi family to which he did great wrong ten years earlier in the Gulf War. Atonement navigates challenging, politically-charged psychological territory with diligence and sensitivity.
The Pervert's Guide to Ideology
Slavoj Zizek re-teams with director Sophie Fiennes for another wildly entertaining romp through the crossroads of cinema and philosophy. From The Sound of Music to Titanic, Jaws to The Dark Knight, Zizek offers new ways to understanding Hollywood.
The Pervert's Guide to Cinema
The Pervert's Guide to Cinema takes the viewer on an exhilarating ride through some of the greatest movies ever made (Hitchcock, Lynch, Tarkovsky et al). Serving as guide is Slavoj Zizek, the superstar Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst.
You Had to Be There
In a strange quirk of fate, the legendary Toronto '72 production of the musical comedy Jesus hit Godspell launched a constellation of comedy stars, all unknown at the time but now known to us as Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas, Victor Garber, et al