There are stories that ask to be handled carefully, not because they are fragile, but because they have been mishandled for so long.
Modern Whore, based on Andrea Werhun’s illustrated memoir and made with her collaborator Nicole Bazuin, is one of those stories. It arrives with humour, glitter, nerve and a title that does not lower its voice. But beneath the provocation is something deeply human: a woman taking authorship over the versions of herself that others might have preferred to simplify.
Werhun returns to earlier selves -Mary Ann the escort, Sophia the stripper, Andrea the OnlyFans creator not as exhibits, warnings or punchlines, but as lived identities with intelligence, feeling, strategy and mischief. The film is not a confession. It is not a plea for approval. It is an act of self-definition. She is 36. Cinema, like lighting, can be kind. But never forever.
And thank heavens, it is funny.
“This is not a confession. It is an act of self-definition.”
What gives Modern Whore its bite is that Werhun refuses the usual bargain. She will not perform shame for respectability. She will not soften the title to make the nervous more comfortable. The word “whore”, she argues, has been hurled not only at sex workers, but at women who step outside the approved little chalk circle. In reclaiming it, she opens the door to a kind of womanhood that is independent, funny, no-nonsense, threatening to patriarchy and entirely too alive to be tidied up.
This is where the film becomes dangerous in the best possible way. It is funny.
Not “cute funny”. Not “quirky funny”. Funny in the way people become when they have had to survive other people’s stupidity, pity and judgement. Werhun says sex workers are some of the funniest people around, but audiences rarely know this because, too often, civilians insist on telling stories about them from the outside: grim, tragic, moralised and obediently gloomy. Modern Whore understands that humour is not a decorative garnish. It is evidence of humanity. Sometimes it is armour. Sometimes it is oxygen.
“Humour is not a decorative garnish. It is evidence of humanity.”
The film also does something formally clever. It blurs documentary and fiction, with Werhun appearing in re-enactments of her own life. Memory, here, puts on heels and steps into the room. The colourful sets point to the performance and artifice behind the glamour of sex work. Nothing about this approach pretends to be plain truth served cold. Instead, it asks a more interesting question: what if performance is not the enemy of honesty? What if the costume, the pose, the character and the set are all part of how a person survives, earns, remembers and tells the truth?
“Memory, here, puts on heels and steps into the room.”
Werhun’s authority over the material matters. She is not simply the subject. She is the author, producer and performer of her own story. That changes everything. The film does not reduce sex work to the stale menu of victim, villain, fantasy or scandal. It speaks of labour, boundaries, intimacy and emotional intelligence. “Professional lovers,” she says, must know how to place emotional and financial boundaries around their time and presence. Frankly, half the world could use the lesson.
“She is not simply the subject. She is the author, producer and performer of her own story.”
There is also a lovely reversal at the heart of Modern Whore. Werhun moves from being looked at as a sex worker to controlling the frame as a storyteller -and then, of course, she is looked at again, this time on screen. But the terms have changed. She is no longer being interpreted by someone else’s anxiety. She is inviting the audience to see her, and perhaps to see through her into a wider community that has been spoken about far more than it has been listened to.
And that is the film’s real grace. Beneath the wit, the colour, the cheek, the sharp title and the tremendous pleasure of someone telling the truth without asking permission, Modern Whore is a plea for recognition. Not sainthood. Not pity. Recognition.
“Not sainthood. Not pity. Recognition.”
Werhun hopes audiences carry away a little version of her in their hearts: happy, silly, lodged somewhere in a tiny arterial hovel. It is a funny image. It is also devastating.
Because if you can care about someone for 80 minutes, perhaps the next task is to care what happens to them once the credits roll.
In my view, Modern Whore is not asking to be respectable.
It is asking to be seen.
And that is far more interesting.
Modern Whore is screening as part of the Doc Edge 2026 Film Festival.
See Andrea Werhun’s funny, fearless and deeply human documentary on the big screen -and discover a film that refuses to let anyone else control the frame.
Get your tickets now via Doc Edge 2026. www.docedge.nz/events/modern-whore/