Summary

Collider’s Perri Nemiroff speaks with Camila Mendes, Nastasya Popov, and Anna Baryshnikov for Idiotka at SXSW 2025.

The movie is a reality TV satire where artists exploit themselves for wealth and fame.

During the interview, Mendes, Popov, and Baryshnikov talk about the film’s development, the importance of a good sizzle reel, the reality TV show they’d love to join, and how Riverdale teed Mendes up to become a skilled indie filmmaker.

The upcoming Masters of the Universe movie is consuming a significant amount of the spotlight, especially after its CinemaCon presentation, but Camila Mendes has another must-watch upcoming film, one that brought her back to SXSW for the second straight year. Idiotka is an indie satire that she not only stars in but also produced via her company, Honor Role. The film happens to be Nastasya Popov’s feature directorial debut, and follows an aspiring designer named Margarita (Anna Baryshnikov), who enrolls in a reality TV show with the hopes of winning and using the prize to prevent her and her family from getting evicted. The film offers a critical look at artists’ relationship with the media and the lengths they might go to exploit themselves in exchange for wealth and fame. It also features a star-studded ensemble with names like Saweetie and Julia Fox in the mix.
In the lead-up to Idiotka’s premiere at the festival, Mendes, Popov, and Baryshnikov stopped by the Collider Media Studio at the Cinema Center and chatted with our own Perri Nemiroff. During their conversation, the director discussed what inspired her to bring this story to the screen, the importance of whipping up an effective sizzle reel to raise funds for the project, and finding the right collaborators to embark on this journey with. Baryshnikov shared why she feels like she manifested her lead role, and revealed the reality TV show she could see herself participating in and winning.
Additionally, Mendes pinpointed what made Riverdale a great launchpad for the cast’s journeys as leaders in this industry, discussed why she felt compelled to play Nicol in Idiotka, and explained why her contribution to the Masters of the Universe live-action is a dream come true. You can watch the full interview in the video above, or you can read the transcript below.
‘Idiotka’ Questions How Much Artists Are Willing to Give

“What we’re really trying to investigate is these artists exposing themselves and selling their skin.”

Image via SXSW

PERRI NEMIROFF: Because we’re celebrating your movie as a film festival debut, our viewership will not know about it just yet. Nastasya, can you give a brief synopsis?
NASTASYA POPOV: Idiotka is about a floundering fashion designer who competes in a reality TV show called Slay Surf Survive because she really needs the cash prize to save her Russian babushka’s apartment. She lives in West Hollywood, California, and as the competition intensifies, she meets a sly producer, Nicol, played by Camila, and Nicol really pushes Margarita to sell her skin and turn her family’s sob story into spectacle. It’s sort of an investigation of how we have to exploit and expose ourselves as artists.
Very well said. That was impressive.
CAMILA MENDES: She’s very eloquent, I must say.
Digging into the development of the story now, what was idea number one, the thing that started this all, but then also, did you have a break story moment along the way that signaled your idea was now whole?
POPOV: Wow, perfect. I mean, it’s like you know what happened. This idea started about, let’s say, four to five years ago. I had just moved back to Los Angeles and was living in an intergenerational household with my Russian-Jewish family: my grandma, my parents, my sister, and my boyfriend. It was very claustrophobic, chaotic, and really good content. It was really funny, but I needed to release something, so I started writing the script. At first, it was a bit more of a dramedy, just a small family story, and then Anna got involved about one year in. I was developing it with my longtime creative collaborator Tess Cohen, and then once we shot this sizzle two years in, as we were trying to raise funding, I saw that Anna was just this brilliant comedic actress, and that’s when the story, right after we shot the sizzle, broke for us. We were like, “Oh, what we’re really trying to investigate is these artists exposing themselves and selling their skin, and the perfect, comedic and hilarious vehicle for this is reality TV.”

Image by Photagonist

So, it was a click because I knew I wanted the character to be on a stage of sorts, but this reality TV competition setting just created this perfect engine wherein we could just have so much fun. Being from LA and knowing all the kooky characters that come from my beloved hometown, it’s just so fun to then expand and get the celebrity judges in and get Owen Thiele to be the host and get a character like Cami’s, who was pushing the story along and asking these deep, thematic questions, but in this fun, fabulous, fashion setting.
Many follow-up questions! The first thing I wanted to go back to was the sizzle reel because we’re celebrating independent cinema and a first feature here. It’s not easy to get a first feature off the ground. When you’re putting together that sizzle, what are some top priorities you have so that you can convey your vision to the people that are gonna have to back it to get it a green light?
POPOVA: I think the best advice I got about the sizzle was almost to write it as if it’s a trailer. So, we had this script, and obviously, it was still gonna go through so much work, but I chose something we could do for no budget. We shot it in my grandma’s apartment. The actors just came out and worked for nothing. It ended up only being two minutes long, which, the bite-sized aspect of it, I think, really helped people be like, “OK, fine, I’ll watch something that’s two minutes long.” It was just about showing the fashion, which my sister’s wardrobe is what we pulled from. So, just being scrappy at every stage of this process, but for a sizzle, you just need to make sure it shows that you have an original aesthetic.
ANNA BARYSHNIKOV: It really was the foundation of our collaboration, because I quickly understood what Nast was like on a set and how she directed. I got a huge faith in her editing instinct.
POPOVA: I edited it.
BARYSHNIKOV: The tone was so sharp, and I could see the movie very clearly, and it was very sweet because we showed it as we were bringing people onto the project, we showed everyone. Saweetie, who plays one of the judges, showed up on the first day, and she was like, “I loved you in the sizzle,” and I was so moved because I think everyone then knew what they were signing on for, that we were making this kind of expanded version, but the sizzle had something very true to your ethos about it.
MENDES: It was an incredible sizzle! It was so captivating and completely sold the tone of the film.
Anna Baryshnikov Believes She Could Win ‘Survivor’

“This might just be coming out of my love for Mike White.”

Image via CBS

Because you brought up the reality TV element, I’ll go here next – if each of you could be on the reality TV show or the game show of your choice, what would you pick, and could you actually win it?
MENDES: Good question! Perri, your questions are getting a little too good lately.
I’m going on Wheel of Fortune and I will win.
BARYSHNIKOV: This is so bold of me to say. I think I’d be really good on Survivor. My family watched it growing up. I think because of an actor’s mind for psychology, but then also, I was an athlete growing up, and I think just kind of the physical aspects I might enjoy. I don’t know. I would probably be driven completely crazy, but I might have a good time.
A friend was just telling me about a Survivor party she does and one of the challenges is eating bugs. I said I would eat a bug, but then she told me it was like a whole buffet of them! Would you be able to do that stuff?
BARYSHNIKOV: I don’t know. As I’m thinking about it, this might just be coming out of my love for Mike White.
POPOVA: I guess I would say Shark Tank.
BARYSHNIKOV: You would be great on Shark Tank!
POPOVA: I’m really working on my pitching. I’ve been working on my pitching, and I’m also a huge fan of Mark Cuban, who gets a special shoutout in this film, so I think just in honor of making everything meta, I would choose Shark Tank.
MENDES: I’m struggling to think of competitive shows that I watch. I feel like the reality TV I watch is, like, Love Is Blind, which I don’t know that you can win that. Can you win Love Is Blind?
BARYSHNIKOV: You can win Love Island. I would be voted off immediately from Love Island because I would not find love, but I would be having so much fun with my girlfriends.
Camila Mendes Credits ‘Riverdale’ For Her Creative Autonomy

Riverdale also allowed the cast to do everything from musical numbers to playing superheroes.

Image via The CW

Camila, I was telling you I saw Lili [Reinhart] at Sundance with Hal & Harper, and I saw her here with American Sweatshop, which is also phenomenal. I saw Cole [Sprouse] last year at SXSW. I’m seeing him again this year at the festival. And then I think about Madelaine [Petsch], who’s running around producing Strangers movies. Now you’re back here as well, and it just makes me wonder, what was it about the Riverdale experience that gave you all the itch to make stuff on your own and be leaders, and also gave you the tools to be able to do it?
MENDES: Once again, a great question, Perri. Honestly, I think it’s two things. One of them is that throughout the course of making Riverdale, every episode there’s a new director, and so what becomes the throughline really is us. We’re becoming co-creators with each other, making the show. I think in some ways we all kind of started to have agency over the creative choices in the show, whether or not that was in tandem with the showrunner. It was more just like we were crafting these characters, and we were crafting the stories that we wanted to tell with the characters. I think that gave us some creative autonomy that maybe we wouldn’t have had without it.
Then the second thing, when you’re on a show for so long, you start to really have an understanding of what you want to do when it’s over, and that becomes clearer with time. And actually, I’m gonna add a third thing, which is that in that show we did everything you could imagine. There wasn’t a single thing we didn’t do. Every genre we played with and experimented with, every storyline. Every time someone says something, I’m like, “Yeah, we did that on Riverdale.” Like superheroes? “Yeah, we did that.” Harvesting organs? “Yeah, we did that.” So, I think that just really opened up our minds to different creative avenues.

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Anna Baryshnikov Manifested This Leading Role

“The month shooting this was one of the best months of my life.”

Anna, I’m coming your way. This movie is a big deal. This is your first time leading a feature film, a huge accomplishment, and you absolutely crush it. What does it mean to you to finally get that opportunity, and why are you glad that it happened with this movie of all movies?
BARYSHNIKOV: We were just saying at lunch, I think it’s a really good case for putting out in the universe what you want, because I had gone to dinner with a friend of mine, and we were kind of talking about our dreams for the new year and I said that I felt so lucky to have done a few scenes in really high quality projects but that I was really looking for something that I could be number one on,
to be totally frank. He said he had just read a script that made him think of me, and he wanted to connect me with Nastasya, and it really was because I just said that that was what I was looking for. My standards weren’t high. I was kind of going to do whatever version of that came my way, and I just could not have gotten luckier. Full stop, the month shooting this was one of the best months of my life, and Nastasya is not only an exquisite collaborator but now someone I really consider a very dear friend, and it was, start to finish, a really incredible creative experience. I loved the character so much.
MENDES: There’s literally nobody else that could have played Margarita. You were born to play that role.
It is so incredibly true. You make this feel so uniquely your own.
Camila, I’ll ask about your character now because one thing that always fascinates me about a supporting character in a movie is that you need to fill the role that is written on the page, but I still have to believe that she’s a real person. I don’t know if you like to do backstory work, but if you do, is there anything you came up with that maybe we don’t directly see or hear in the finished film, but we can feel informing how you carry yourself in the role and the choices she makes?
MENDES: Nas and I talked a lot about how Nicol doesn’t come from much, and so she sort of recognizes herself in Margarita, where she’s like, “I know what it’s like to be scrappy, and this is how I got to where I’m at. You’ve got to, in a way, wear your heart on your sleeve but in an aggressive kind of ambitious manner.” That was something we wanted to weave in when it came to the manipulation of it all, because we don’t want Nicol to be perceived as just a pure antagonist. I think there are good intentions. There’s also selfish intentions in how she’s getting Margarita to unravel a bit and reveal more about her personal life and her family life. But I think Nicol also realizes that this is helping her in the end and that it’s getting her closer to her personal goals.

Image by Photagonist

Nastasya, there’s another person that I really wanted to ask you about. It’s your cinematographer, Kristen [Correll], because I’m a little obsessed with The Fallout and My Old Ass and I just think her eye is spot-on. Can you tell me a little bit about collaborating with her?
POPOV: Yes. It was another blessing. I love her. She became another best friend throughout this process, and she’s just incredible. I think she really had an admiration and respect for reality TV that when we were shotlisting, she would be like, “Okay, so, here we need to have that moment where the judges come in, and it’s a slo-mo shot.” By respecting that craft, I think we paid real, true homage to that aesthetic. There was a really amazing duality with this more naturalistic POV that we see when Margarita’s at home, and K2, as she’s known amongst us, and there are two different lens types, and that one was shot on stick, so, like, locked off.
For a first feature, I was really impressed by, like, “Okay, let’s take the bold choice to not do that frenetic handheld thing that you’re used to and take a harder approach of how we will kind of create frames within frames and make it feel almost like a painting in that naturalistic POV?” So, I just had the best time working with her. She’s also so fun and funny, and I think for a comedy, having a DP who’s not too self-serious and gets the joke and the humor and makes actors feel comfortable, I mean, I would be lucky to work with her again and again.
Being Part of ‘Masters of the Universe’ Is a Dream Come True for Camila Mendes

Being a part of a superhero universe outside DC and Marvel drew her in.

Image by Nimesh Niyomal Perera

I have to let you go soon, so it’s time to ask about an upcoming project. It’s Masters of the Universe, which is a biggie. I know you probably can’t say much, but that is a big, epic production that is tied to lore that really means a lot to a lot of people out there. While it is a big opportunity for you, what is it about the role and maybe the project in general that makes you say to yourself, “This is worth jumping into, and I have something to gain from it as an actor who’s always looking to evolve my craft?”
MENDES: To be honest, I’ve always dreamed of being in a project like this, and there’s something that is so special about it because it doesn’t have the same fanbase as Marvel or DC. It feels like it’s a fresh superhero universe. It hasn’t really been reinvented in a long time. It’s exciting to create this world and in a less pressured environment, if that makes sense. Then also, I think the project itself is just really fun and funny and has layers and beautiful arcs and stories. I love Teela’s character so much, and I relate to her in so many ways that I can’t really talk about. I think that’s all I can say about that.
I’ll dare to squeeze in one more question because Nicholas [Galitzine] is playing He-Man and, again, just utterly iconic. So many people love that character, and I know he probably feels great pressure to live up to those standards, but can you tell me maybe something you’ve seen him do that makes this version of the character unique to him?
MENDES: I feel like if I were to tell you that, it would completely give away a huge plot point, but I think it’d be his sense of humor. He’s very funny. Very, very talented, and very funny.
Special thanks to our 2025 partners at SXSW, including presenting partner Rendezvous Films and supporting partners Bloom, Peroni, Hendrick’s Gin, and Roxstar Entertainment.

Idiotka

Release Date

March 12, 2025

Runtime

82 minutes

Director

Nastasya Popov

Writers

Nastasya Popov, Tess Cohen

Producers

Mike Karz, Rachel Matthews, Bill Bindley, Anna Baryshnikov, David Kaplan, Camila Mendes, Lisa Kleiner-Chanoff, Julia Fox, Josh Peters, Robina Riccitiello, Jeremy Allen, Saba Zerehi

Anna Baryshnikov

Uncredited