Netflix Losing Acclaimed Christmas Movie on Nov. 30

One of the best Christmas movies of recent years is leaving Netflix just after Thanksgiving.

Tangerine, Sean Baker’s 2015 comedy-drama about a sex worker who stomps around Hollywood on Christmas Eve looking for the man who cheated on her, is leaving Netflix next Sunday.

It’s a surprising move for Netflix to ditch the film, given that director Sean Baker’s last movie Anora—which is also a screwball comedy about a sex worker frantically searching for a man who did her wrong—swept last year’s Academy Awards, making him the first person to ever win four Oscars for the same film in a single year.

Upon release, Tangerine was hailed as revolutionary, both for maintaining a big-budget look on a microscopically small budget (the film was shot on an iPhone 5S) and its comedic yet sympathetic examination of sex work. With a 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, the critic’s consensus reads: “Tangerine shatters casting conventions and its filmmaking techniques are up-to-the-minute, but it’s an old-fashioned comedy at heart—and a pretty wonderful one at that.”

In 2021, Entertainment Weekly hailed the film as “the best Christmas movie that’s not really about Christmas,” placing it alongside hallowed not-Christmas classics like Die Hard, Gremlins, and Trading Places while declaring it deserves a spot among new-age Christmas classics like Will Ferrell’s Elf.

Tangerine is streaming now on Netflix—but not for long.