Guidebook for a Post-Anora World

Some recs for your next post-Soviet fix

I was pleasantly surprised when Sean Baker’s Anora ended up the breakout film of award season, netting the Palme d'Or at Cannes, then a handful of the biggest Oscars earlier this week, including Best Actress for Mikey Madison. That last one was one of the film’s two biggest surprises for me, mostly because Madison blew me away playing an Uzbek-American girl from Brighton Beach so perfectly when she’s girl from the Los Angeles suburbs who grew up doing competitive horseback riding. I mean she nailed the vibe you can’t miss when you get down towards the last stops on the N, Q, D, F, and N lines perfectly that I was shocked she wasn’t actually from somewhere along Ocean Parkway.

Growing up, I was the token American kid around a lot of people who came over from all over the Soviet Union, and the terrain Baker’s film covers is very familiar to me. Every few weeks you can catch me getting on the subway to go down to Brighton Beach to grab a loaf or two of black bread and whatever else I’m craving and can’t get anywhere else in Brooklyn, and books or films that remind me of the culture down there tend to stick with me. So with that, five things I’d suggest if you need a fix after Anora.

How to Get Into the Twin Palms by Karolina Waclawiak

Waclawiak has put out a couple of novels that I don’t think got enough attention, but her 2012 debut (which is getting a new edition with an intro from Ed Park sometime this year from Two Dollar Radio) is one of my favorites of the still relatively young century. It’s about a Polish girl named Anya and the lengths she’ll go to in hopes of getting to party with the Russians in an L.A. nightclub. It’s a great immigrant novel, and a great L.A. novel that feels like a distant cousin of Anora.

Little Odessa

I’d like to call James Grey “my boy,” but he’s only that because I’m such a fan. We’ve never met and I’m sure I’d be like Chris Farley interviewing somebody if we did. “Uh, remember that time in 1994 your debut feature Little Odessa came out and it was set in Brighton Beach and you had Tim Roth while he was at his peak playing a Russian-Jewish hitman and Eddie Furlong was his little brother? That was awesome.”

I love this movie. It has its faults, but it captures Brooklyn in the middle of the Dinkins to Rudy era so perfectly. The British-born (and not Jewish despite the name. His grandfather changed it to that as a middle-finger to the Nazis) Roth wouldn’t have been even in the top 5 actors on my list for the lead, but he owns it.

A Most Violent Year

The 2014 J. C. Chandor film doesn’t take place in Brighton Beach and Oscar Isaac plays a guy who is originally from Colombia, but this film was the last perfect example of “outer borough protagonist trying to make a living by any means necessary” I saw until Anora. Plus, the way Isaac’s Abel Morales and his blonde shiksa wife (played by Jessica Chastain) are trying so hard to let people know they’re wealthy and they belong among other rich people has a particular new money Eastern European feel to me that is hard to miss as you walk along Orient Ave. in Brooklyn.

Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart

I had to pick whether I was going with this or Shteyngart’s 2002 debut, The Russian Debutante's Handbook, which felt like the more natural choice for a few reasons. But his second book, about the misadventures of the fail son of a shady Russian oligarch forced back to Eastern Europe after living in the U.S., at times feels like A Confederacy of Dunces mixed with Kafka. It’s hilarious.

All-Night Pharmacy by Ruth Madievsky

Like Waclawiak’s book, this one takes place in Los Angeles, but if it flipped to the other coast I’m sure a lot of the action would take place underneath the train tracks in Brighton Beach. It’s got plenty of people with connections to the former Soviet Union who are struggling in America (Madievsky herself was born in Moldova), and the sex and drugs give it a very specific charge of energy that have me hoping somebody scoops up the film rights and turns this into the next Anora. Coincidentally, Madievsky profiled Mikey Madison last fall when she was still a “rising star.” It’s funny to look at the piece now and see they added mention of her Oscar win in the headline.

The Last Boss of Brighton: Boris "Biba" Nayfeld and the Rise of the Russian Mob in America by Douglas Century

You want to know how Brighton Beach got its reputation for being a hotbed of Russian tough guys? You gotta read this biography on the man whose name you still hear old guys on the beach whispering about. Biba is as tough and terrifying as they come, and Century’s biography tells his true story (or as much as Nayfeld was willing to divulge) but also the terrible conditions many people faced in the Soviet Union, and why a life of crime was the only real option in the States.

Eastern Promises

I’ve gotten into shouting matches with film nerds because I will not give an inch when they try to convince me that this 2007 film isn’t David Cronenberg’s best. Videodrome? The Fly? Sure, they’re great. Eastern Promises is a moody masterpiece. The only way to describe Viggo Mortensen’s performance is he’s a fucking beast, and the closest we get to the body horror Cronenberg is famous for is the banya fight scene which I am pretty sure is one of the—if not the—best fight sequence I’ve ever seen in any movie ever. It takes place in London, but Eastern Promises and Anora both feature some of the greatest portrayals of Russian men you never want to mess with that I’ve ever enjoyed watching.