Month: March 2025

The Oscar-winning film “Anora” may be fictitious — but the over-the-top mansion prominently featured in it certainly exists in real life.

Priced at a staggering $30 million when it first hit the market more than a decade ago, this 14,000-square-foot Brooklyn behemoth — once home to a Russian heiress dubbed “Russia’s Paris Hilton” — is now basking in its own limelight. 

In the wake of the movie’s many victories on Sunday night, and as film buffs and real estate aficionados alike scramble to decode its allure, this mansion’s journey from oligarch hideaway to Hollywood darling offers a window into a corner of New York City few outsiders ever get a glimpse of.

Directed by Sean Baker, who snagged Best Director for his efforts, “Anora” tells the story of Ani (Mikey Madison, newly crowned Best 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 living in this very property.

Their rhapsodic, and star-crossed, romance unfurls against the backdrop of this jaw-dropping estate, a labyrinth of marble, mirrors, and excess that Baker stumbled upon with a Google search for “the biggest and best mansion in Brighton Beach.” 

He missed that mark by a few miles, landing instead in Mill Basin — a waterfront enclave where Russian wealth has quietly taken root for decades. Baker told Variety he found the house fairly easily, marveling at its authenticity: built by a real Russian oligarch, it was a casting coup too perfect to script.

The mansion at 2458 National Drive is, to say the least, a statement. 

The residence presently belongs to a man named Michael Davidoff, a New York-raised financier born to Russian immigrants, who nearly turned Baker away. 

Living there with his wife and seven children — ages spanning 20-month-old twins to a 25-year-old — Davidoff hesitated to lease it out. 

With a 6,000-square-foot home around the corner still in his portfolio, the roughly $30,000-a-day filming fee over nearly a month of production tipped the scales. 

“At first, I didn’t want to do it because it was a low-budget movie,” Davidoff told The Post, skeptical after previously 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.”

At the very least, the film crew was very into the home’s aesthetic. Limestone, stucco and dark glass clash 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: five bedrooms, 4.5 baths, a 1,000-square-foot pool, a theater, staff quarters — and a garage that, in the film, showcases a fleet of luxury cars. Leather walls, a spa and a pavilion seating 40 round out the amenities, while marble — acres of it — lines bathrooms and floors. 

“There were so many rooms we didn’t even use,” production designer Stephen Phelps told Curbed, who recalls “exploring” the space like an archaeologist unearthing a lost kingdom. For Baker’s crew, it was a goldmine. They barely touched the decorations, scavenging surreal statues and paintings from the owners to flesh out the oligarch vibe. 

“The style and the choices that were made in the construction feel real,” Phelps added.

Beyond its look, the home comes with quite the history. A woman named Anna Anisimova — the New York Magazine-anointed “Russian Paris Hilton” — lived there as a teen in the late ’90s and early 2000s. 

Now Anna Schafer, a Los Angeles-based skincare entrepreneur and aspiring actress, recalls her father, Vasily Anisimov — a billionaire with a $2.1 billion fortune, per Forbes — snagging the place in 1996 with a move straight out of a movie. 

“My dad was like, ‘Can we knock?’” she told Curbed, recounting a family drive through Mill Basin with a real estate broker. “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 followed was surreal: “We ended up having dinner there,” Schafer added, followed by a sleepover — her family inside, the owners on their yacht. “They had this beautiful boat,” she said. 

Anisimov, a former judo buddy of Vladimir Putin who parlayed aluminum into a real estate empire, liked the dead-end seclusion. 

“There’s no through traffic,” Schafer said. “I think my dad liked how secluded it was and how private it was.”

The seller was John Rosatti, a Brooklyn-born yacht flipper and auto magnate worth an estimated $400 million three years ago, who kicked off construction in 1989. 

Rosatti, who once owned a 162-foot vessel dubbed Remember When (a “Sopranos” nod), handed it over for $3 million that same year after a spat over a deck built atop protected wetlands. 

From there, Anisimov’s wife, Galina, unleashed a 2003 overhaul, adding a third story and importing European marble to craft a primary suite Schafer still recalls fondly. 

“That was my mom’s room,” she told Curbed of the bay-view perch where she’d wake to water lapping outside. Summers meant Jet Ski jaunts with friends. “It wasn’t a terrible childhood. It was very free.”

But the fairy tale soured. After Schafer and her sister left New York, the family listed the house in 2013 for $30 million. It languished, drawing snickers for its gaudy excess and Rosatti ties — headlines Galina told her daughter broke her heart. 

By 2018, it sold for $10 million to an LLC; three years later, the Davidoffs scooped it up for $7.2 million.  

Local broker Doreen Alfano of Bergen Basin Realty confirms Anisimova’s teenage stint there and the area’s appeal. 

“It’s our best-kept secret,” she told the outlet of Mill Basin, a peninsula jutting into Jamaica Bay where docks and boats are as common as bodegas elsewhere.

That secrecy suits the area’s eclectic elite. Waterfront homes start at $2.5 million — “the bigger the house, the bigger the price tag,” Alfano quipped.

Yet it’s a trek: 45 minutes to Manhattan by car, with buses as the lifeline and the Midwood subway a 14-minute drive. Still, the perks pile up — proximity to Coney Island and Rockaway Beach, plus Lindower Park’s ballfields and pools. 

Mill Basin’s melting pot adds flavor: Italian-Americans mingle with a growing Russian contingent, Orthodox Jews, Israelis and newcomers like a Pakistani restaurateur. “There’s a big Russian community, Muslims,” Alfano said. “There’s Greek food, French food. And the schools are great.” Average homes hover at $1 million, but this cinematic gem stands apart — a relic of excess now reborn as a cultural touchstone.

When she heard that the film, centered around the mansion, had its big Oscar’s night, only one word came to mind: “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 told The Post. “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.” 

In fact, Alfano revealed that the home had been in a transitional period, having just been sold 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 movie’s raw edge until he saw it. 

“I really didn’t know exactly what the film was about,” he told The Post. “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 cast members crash overnight during filming and use his cars that were filmed in the movie — and now even plans a celebratory dinner with Baker and his wife, Samantha. 

Davidoff’s wife nudged him to buy the home, overriding his comfort 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 said. “There’s nothing like it. Nothing in the five boroughs that I have seen.” 

Davidoff said the previous owners have hinted at regret at letting the home go. 

“This house is out of the ordinary. It is not an ordinary house,” he said. “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.”