SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Let's let the central character in the new film "Idiotka" introduce herself.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "IDIOTKA")
ANNA BARYSHNIKOV: (As Margarita) I'm Margarita, and I am humbled to be taping for your unscripted fashion competition series. My hometown is West Hollywood, California - not the fancy part, the Russian part. I would describe my aesthetic as Old World trash and treasure. She's milking a cow at 5, but she needs to be at the ballet at 5:10. Loves a bargain bin.
SIMON: Anna Baryshnikov plays Margarita, an aspiring young fashion designer who enters a reality show to win the money to save her babushka's family apartment. "Idiotka" also stars Camila Mendes, Julia Fox and Benito Skinner. It is directed by Nastasya Popov, who joins us now from our studios in Culver City, California. Thanks so much for being with us.
NASTASYA POPOV: Thank you so much for having me.
SIMON: And "Idiotka" - it's Russian for what it sounds like, right?
POPOV: Exactly.
SIMON: When the film opens, Margarita and her family are in desperate circumstances, aren't they?
POPOV: They are. They can't pay rent. They're five months late, and, you know, Margarita decides to take things into her own hands.
SIMON: You from a similar background?
POPOV: I am from Los Angeles, born and raised in West Hollywood by Russian immigrant parents. And my sister is actually a fashion designer, so she was the inspiration for the fashion elements.
SIMON: Some of the sharpest moments in the film are your depictions of Hollywood's investment in victimology. Now, here's a clip of the back-and-forth when Margarita presents the show judges with her design of a yellow dress with a model who carries white plastic bags.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "IDIOTKA")
BARYSHNIKOV: (As Margarita) So one of my grandpas was from Chernivtsi, a city in Ukraine, though, we're mostly Jews who weren't considered real Russians or Ukrainians. But anyway, I digress. As soon as I saw the yellow fabric, I knew that I wanted to stand in solidarity.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Oh, yes. Girl, that war was a disaster, kind of like this piece.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Overtly woke art is a no for me.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As character) I mean, the proportions are interesting, but I do worry about the sustainability factor with your plastic bags.
BARYSHNIKOV: (As Margarita) Exactly. Being a political refugee isn't sustainable. You have to carry your life on your back.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Too much.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Too literal.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As character) And can we talk about your anxiety for a second? I heard you had, like, a breakout or a rash or something.
SIMON: This had me rolling. But it's also devastating. What are you noticing about America here?
POPOV: I think it's the artist's job to force people who are scrolling through their feeds to pay attention. So I really wanted to call out the fact that, for instance, the war in Ukraine has been going on for four years, but someone might just refer to it in the past tense because that's how quickly we glaze over the news cycle. So, yeah, I think it's just inviting the audience to pay a little more attention and think about the human behind the, quote-unquote, identity politics that we're all subject to.
SIMON: But when Margarita confides that there are problems, they perk up.
POPOV: Exactly. Yeah. I think in Hollywood, I was encouraged to bear my trauma for all to hear, and that really made people pay more attention and did make their ears perk up. And I thought that was an interesting juxtaposition between, you know, the more Slavic Jewish side, where we're taught to suffer in silence. And so I thought that culture clash was really ripe for comedy.
SIMON: I mean, when the judges hear that a family member of Margarita's is just out of prison, they light up, don't they?
POPOV: Absolutely.
SIMON: Wait, what is it they say? We love unhinged.
POPOV: We love unhinged. What are your mental health challenges? The more skeletons that any of these contestants have in their closet, the better. And I love reality TV. You know, I think that it's become more and more of a medium that we're all essentially living in our own reality TV show. So I wasn't - I was trying to both respect it and criticize it.
SIMON: I gather you've been working on this idea for years.
POPOV: (Laughter) Yes.
SIMON: Well, help us understand how you got it on screen.
POPOV: I wrote the first draft of this script in 2022, I believe. And then a mutual friend sent it to Anna Baryshnikov, who is brilliant.
SIMON: She's hilarious in the film.
POPOV: She's hilarious. She's a star. So she had this similar background 'cause her dad is Mikhail Baryshnikov, who my parents grew up, of course, revering. And we were struggling to find financing, as is the case often with independent films. So we shot this no-budget sizzle reel in my grandmother's apartment, and that's when Camila Mendes read a version of the script and came on with her producing partner. We went to Julia Fox's book talk and gave her a copy of the script, and she had just announced that she would be hosting a reality show. And Owen Thiele I knew just from growing up in LA, and he was so hilarious, and I felt like he was destined to be the host of a reality show. So it was really a all-hands-on-deck effort to get this incredible, very contemporary cast involved.
SIMON: The movie is dedicated to the memory of your grandmother. It's a big memory.
POPOV: I've seen the movie 500 times, so it is hard for me to watch at this point. But when I do watch it, I get to see my grandmother's clothes and the room - we truly shot in her bedroom. So I think it was important to me to immortalize her spirit. And I will say that another godsend of this casting process was Galina Jovovich, who plays the grandmother and is actually the mother of Milla Jovovich, who sacrificed so much to bring Milla here and give her that career. So I think there just were these layers of history and personality, as you see on screen. Once I found Galina, I was like, we have to make this movie somehow because you don't find a star like this and get her to come out of retirement for nothing.
SIMON: What do you hope to take of your grandmother's spirit and memory?
POPOV: There was a lot of little tidbits in the movie of what she would say, like, just knock on the doors. Don't listen to anyone who tells you no. I think that was very much the spirit of this film. I think when you hear a no as a young filmmaker, you have to just brush it off and understand that if you just are tenacious, creation will be rewarded.
SIMON: Nastasya Popov has directed the new film "Idiotka," in select theaters now. Thank you so much for being with us.
POPOV: Thank you so much for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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