The Oscar-winning movie “Anora” could also be fictitious — however the over-the-top mansion prominently featured in it actually exists in actual life.
Priced at a staggering $30 million when it first hit the market greater than a decade in the past, this 14,000-square-foot Brooklyn behemoth — as soon as house to a Russian heiress dubbed “Russia’s Paris Hilton” — is now basking in its personal limelight.
Within the wake of the film’s many victories on Sunday night time, and as movie buffs and actual property aficionados alike scramble to decode its attract, this mansion’s journey from oligarch hideaway to Hollywood darling gives a window right into a nook of New York Metropolis few outsiders ever get a glimpse of.
Directed by Sean Baker, who snagged Finest Director for his efforts, “Anora” tells the story of Ani (Mikey Madison, newly topped Finest Actress), a street-smart stripper from Brooklyn, and Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn), the reckless 21-year-old scion of a Russian billionaire, who’s spending time away from Russia and dwelling on this very property.
Their rhapsodic, and star-crossed, romance unfurls towards the backdrop of this jaw-dropping property, a labyrinth of marble, mirrors, and extra that Baker stumbled upon with a Google seek for “the biggest and best mansion in Brighton Beach.”
He missed that mark by just a few miles, touchdown as a substitute in Mill Basin — a waterfront enclave the place Russian wealth has quietly taken root for many years. Baker informed Selection he discovered the home pretty simply, marveling at its authenticity: constructed by an actual Russian oligarch, it was a casting coup too excellent to script.
The mansion at 2458 Nationwide Drive is, to say the least, a press release.
The residence presently belongs to a person named Michael Davidoff, a New York-raised financier born to Russian immigrants, who almost turned Baker away.
Residing there together with his spouse and 7 kids — ages spanning 20-month-old twins to a 25-year-old — Davidoff hesitated to lease it out.
With a 6,000-square-foot house across the nook nonetheless in his portfolio, the roughly $30,000-a-day filming charge over almost a month of manufacturing tipped the scales.
“At first, I didn’t want to do it because it was a low-budget movie,” Davidoff informed The Publish, skeptical after beforehand internet hosting glitzier shoots. “I was kind of skeptical because I had movies shot there [before] and they weren’t low budget. But then I said to myself, ‘You know what, I really like the director and his crew.’ And then I felt very comfortable with them.”
On the very least, the movie crew was very into the house’s aesthetic. Limestone, stucco and darkish glass conflict in a façade that evokes a Miami vice lord’s lair crossed with a sci-fi fortress.
Inside, it’s a fever dream of opulence: 5 bedrooms, 4.5 baths, a 1,000-square-foot pool, a theater, employees quarters — and a storage that, within the movie, showcases a fleet of luxurious automobiles. Leather-based partitions, a spa and a pavilion seating 40 spherical out the facilities, whereas marble — acres of it — strains bogs and flooring.
“There were so many rooms we didn’t even use,” manufacturing designer Stephen Phelps informed Curbed, who remembers “exploring” the house like an archaeologist unearthing a misplaced kingdom. For Baker’s crew, it was a goldmine. They barely touched the decorations, scavenging surreal statues and work from the house owners to flesh out the oligarch vibe.
“The style and the choices that were made in the construction feel real,” Phelps added.
Past its look, the house comes with fairly the historical past. A lady named Anna Anisimova — the New York Journal-anointed “Russian Paris Hilton” — lived there as a teen within the late ’90s and early 2000s.
Now Anna Schafer, a Los Angeles-based skincare entrepreneur and aspiring actress, remembers her father, Vasily Anisimov — a billionaire with a $2.1 billion fortune, per Forbes — snagging the place in 1996 with a transfer straight out of a film.
“My dad was like, ‘Can we knock?’” she informed Curbed, recounting a household drive by Mill Basin with an actual property dealer. “The family opened the gate and my dad walked in, and as a joke was like, ‘Do you want to sell your house to me?’”
What adopted was surreal: “We ended up having dinner there,” Schafer added, adopted by a sleepover — her household inside, the house owners on their yacht. “They had this beautiful boat,” she stated.
Anisimov, a former judo buddy of Vladimir Putin who parlayed aluminum into an actual property empire, favored the dead-end seclusion.
“There’s no through traffic,” Schafer stated. “I think my dad liked how secluded it was and how private it was.”
The vendor was John Rosatti, a Brooklyn-born yacht flipper and auto magnate value an estimated $400 million three years in the past, who kicked off development in 1989.
Rosatti, who as soon as owned a 162-foot vessel dubbed Bear in mind When (a “Sopranos” nod), handed it over for $3 million that very same yr after a spat over a deck constructed atop protected wetlands.
From there, Anisimov’s spouse, Galina, unleashed a 2003 overhaul, including a 3rd story and importing European marble to craft a major suite Schafer nonetheless remembers fondly.
“That was my mom’s room,” she informed Curbed of the bay-view perch the place she’d wake to water lapping outdoors. Summers meant Jet Ski jaunts with associates. “It wasn’t a terrible childhood. It was very free.”
However the fairy story soured. After Schafer and her sister left New York, the household listed the home in 2013 for $30 million. It languished, drawing snickers for its gaudy extra and Rosatti ties — headlines Galina informed her daughter broke her coronary heart.
By 2018, it offered for $10 million to an LLC; three years later, the Davidoffs scooped it up for $7.2 million.
Native dealer Doreen Alfano of Bergen Basin Realty confirms Anisimova’s teenage stint there and the world’s attraction.
“It’s our best-kept secret,” she informed the outlet of Mill Basin, a peninsula jutting into Jamaica Bay the place docks and boats are as widespread as bodegas elsewhere.
That secrecy fits the world’s eclectic elite. Waterfront houses begin at $2.5 million — “the bigger the house, the bigger the price tag,” Alfano quipped.
But it’s a trek: 45 minutes to Manhattan by automobile, with buses because the lifeline and the Midwood subway a 14-minute drive. Nonetheless, the perks pile up — proximity to Coney Island and Rockaway Seashore, plus Lindower Park’s ballfields and swimming pools.
Mill Basin’s melting pot provides taste: Italian-Individuals mingle with a rising Russian contingent, Orthodox Jews, Israelis and newcomers like a Pakistani restaurateur. “There’s a big Russian community, Muslims,” Alfano stated. “There’s Greek food, French food. And the schools are great.” Common houses hover at $1 million, however this cinematic gem stands aside — a relic of extra now reborn as a cultural touchstone.
When she heard that the movie, centered across the mansion, had its huge Oscar’s night time, just one phrase got here to thoughts: “proud.”
“I was really proud because I knew every single inch of that house. And to see it in the movie, it just really made me feel so good to know that I was a part of it,” Alfano informed The Publish. “It was actually the location scout who had reached out to me at the time asking about it, and the owner of the house at the time didn’t live in New York, they lived in Russia.”
Actually, Alfano revealed that the house had been in a transitional interval, having simply been offered to the Davidoffs.
“It was a matter of … ‘will the new owner be okay with it?’ And he most certainly was.”
Davidoff, who snapped up the property in 2021 didn’t grasp the film’s uncooked edge till he noticed it.
“I really didn’t know exactly what the film was about,” he informed The Publish. “And then when I saw it, I’m like, ‘He has to win an Oscar for this movie.’ And that’s exactly what happened.”
Davidoff even let forged members crash in a single day throughout filming and use his automobiles that have been filmed within the film — and now even plans a celebratory dinner with Baker and his spouse, Samantha.
Davidoff’s spouse nudged him to purchase the house, overriding his consolation with their prior pad.
“When I found out this [home] was for sale, I’m like, ‘You know what? I have to grab it because it’s the jewel of New York City,’” he stated. “There’s nothing like it. Nothing in the five boroughs that I have seen.”
Davidoff stated the earlier house owners have hinted at remorse at letting the house go.
“This house is out of the ordinary. It is not an ordinary house,” he stated. “I haven’t changed [anything]. Not one single thing. Because I love the architecture. The architecture is very rare. For those times. And I’m talking about 20 years ago.”
He added, “Whoever goes in that house, they fall in love with every single instrument. From the floors down to every single oak or straw or furniture. Every little single thing is custom made. Nothing that you could find in the local stores. And every piece comes from all parts of the world.”
