{"id":325323,"date":"2026-03-06T17:43:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T17:43:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/325323\/"},"modified":"2026-03-06T17:43:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T17:43:09","slug":"anna-baryshnikov-on-idiotka-a-fashion-film-for-the-slavic-sweeties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/325323\/","title":{"rendered":"Anna Baryshnikov on \u2018Idiotka,\u2019 a Fashion Film for the Slavic Sweeties"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the age of streaming slop designed to appeal to as many people mid-Instagram-scroll as possible, there\u2019s something wonderful about a film that\u2019s not afraid to embrace its specificity.<\/p>\n

Writer Nastasya Popov\u2019s 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\u2019s work\u2014for which Popov\u2019s sister Mia Kazovsky, co-founder of the LA-based brand Mimchik<\/a>, served as a consultant\u2014marries post-Soviet kitsch with a runway-ready edge, calling to mind the real-life work of Russian designer Roma Uvarov<\/a>.) The end result is unique and delightful; simply put, it\u2019s a movie for the girls who try to tie a scarf around their heads like Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy<\/a>, but end up looking more like a Soviet propaganda poster.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Image<\/p>\n

Idiotka director Nastasya Popov<\/p>\n

Photo: Tim Grupp<\/p>\n

There\u2019s Margarita\u2019s recovering-alcoholic dad bringing her plates of cut-up \u0441\u043b\u0438\u0432\u044b (plums) as she sews; her musician brother\u2019s simple response to being interrogated about whether he\u2019s gay or not (\u201cDa\u201d); and her grandmother (fabulously brought to life by Galina Jovovich) smoking in bed as she rues her lung cancer diagnosis. While Idiotka\u2019s stacked supporting cast\u2014including Julia Fox, Owen Thiele, Benito Skinner, Saweetie, and Camila Mendes\u2014seems destined to make its clips go TikTok-viral, it\u2019s when the film zeroes in on Margarita\u2019s stubborn and inconvenient love for her less-than-perfect family that it truly shines.<\/p>\n

\u201cI learned so much about myself through this movie,\u201d says Baryshnikov, herself the daughter of ballet dancers Mikhail Baryshnikov and Lisa Rinehart. \u201cI actually grew up very American. My dad defected and didn\u2019t have a big Russian community that I grew up around, and my mom\u2019s 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<\/a> 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.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the age of streaming slop designed to appeal to as many people mid-Instagram-scroll as possible, there\u2019s something…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":325324,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[146,85,46,64253,45884,10051,5101],"class_list":["post-325323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-splitscreenimageleftinset","tag-storytypereporting","tag-tv-movies","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325323\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}