In the age of streaming slop designed to appeal to as many people mid-Instagram-scroll as possible, there’s something wonderful about a film that’s not afraid to embrace its specificity.
Producer Nastasya Popov’s directorial debut, Idiotka, stars Anna Baryshnikov as Margarita, an aspiring fashion designer who goes on a Project Runway-style reality show called Slay, Serve, Survive in order to keep her Russian Jewish family housed in their West Hollywood apartment. (Margarita’s work—for which Popov’s sister Mia Kazovsky, co-founder of the LA-based brand Mimchik, served as a consultant—marries post-Soviet kitsch with a runway-ready edge, calling to mind the real-life work of Russian designer Roma Uvarov.) The end result is unique and delightful; simply put, it’s a movie for the girls who try to tie a scarf around their heads like Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, but end up looking more like a Soviet propaganda poster.
There’s Margarita’s recovering-alcoholic dad bringing her plates of cut-up сливы (plums) as she sews; her musician brother’s simple response to being interrogated about whether he’s gay or not (“Da”); and her grandmother (fabulously brought to life by Galina Jojovich) smoking in bed as she rues her lung cancer diagnosis. While Idiotka’s stacked supporting cast—including Julia Fox, Owen Thiele, Benito Skinner, Saweetie, and Camila Mendes—seems destined to make its clips go TikTok-viral, it’s when the film zeroes in on Margarita’s stubborn and inconvenient love for her less-than-perfect family that it truly shines.
“I learned so much about myself through this movie,” says Baryshnikov, herself the daughter of ballet dancers Mikhail Baryshnikov and Lisa Rinehart. “I actually grew up very American. My dad defected and didn’t have a big Russian community that I grew up around, and my mom’s side of the family is from Ohio and Maine, so I knew a lot more about them. But at the same time, we ate at the Russian Samovar in New York every week, and through working on Idiotka, I think I realized how many cultural things about my life had actually been so Russian and Slavic.”