Anora is now streaming on Hulu, which means even more audiences will be watching the Oscar-winning film.
Anora was the clear winner of the 2025 Oscars earlier this month, taking home the statues for Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Editor. The films stars Mikey Madison as Anora—or Ani, as she goes by—an exotic dancer tasked with taking care of the son of a wealthy Russian oligarch, named Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn). But what starts as a fairy tale romance devolves into a nightmare.
Anora was filmed on location in New York City, primarily in Brighton Beach, a neighborhood in Brooklyn that is home to a large Russian immigrant population. Tourists know the area mainly for being home to NYC’s famed theme park and beach, Coney Island. But the majority of Anora takes place in the winter, when no tourists are taking the F train to the end of the line.
In an interview with Hammer To Nail, director Sean Baker said he was inspired to film a feature in the area after filming there for a commercial for the fashion line Khaite. “I shot a short Khaite fashion film in Coney Island that sparked the desire to shoot in that area,” Baker said. “It was a fashion film I made over Covid that was an homage to The Warriors.”
Additionally, actor Karren Karagulian—who plays Toros, Ivan’s keeper, in the movie—is an Armenian-American actor who first moved to Brighton Beach in 1990. In an interview with Gothamist, Karagulian said he’d dreamed of making a movie set in his neighborhood all his life. Karagulian had previously worked with Baker on Tangerine and The Florida Project.
If you get a sense of authenticity from the locations in Anora, you’re right. Let’s dig into the specific Anora filming locations.
The HQ club from Anora where Ani works:
According to a detailed reported piece in The New York Times on the Anora filming locations, the club where Ani works, HQ, was filmed at HQ KONY, a gentleman’s club in Hudson Yards in Manhattan. Some parts were also filmed at a private cabaret club downstairs in the same building, called the Rosewood Theater.
The mansion in Anora where Ivan lives:
Ivan’s mansion in Anora is a real, 14,000-square-foot mansion in Brooklyn, which, according to the New York Post, really was home to a wealthy Russian heiress back in the day. The property is currently estimated on Zillow at $7,257,100.
According to the New York Times, the mansion is currently occupied by Irina Davidov, a businesswoman who runs a medical spa company. The Anora crew filmed at the mansion for three weeks in 2023, and some of the crew, including locations manager Ross Brodar, even lived in the mansion during the shoot.
Coney Island in Anora:
In the movie, Ivan’s friends work at Coney Island in a candy shop. Later in the movie, Toros and Igor smash up the jars of candy, hoping to get information about Ivan’s whereabouts.
This is a real candy store that you can visit, William’s Candy, which has been open on the Coney Island since 1941. (It’s not on the boardwalk, as appears in the movie, but rather more inland, toward the entrance.) In an interview with NBC New York, owner Peter Agrapides, said “We were finding that glass all over the place for months after that.”
As a nod to the Coney Island community, Billy O’Brien—a well-known presence on Coney Island—plays the candy store owner in the movie.
Las Vegas in Anora
For the parts of the movie in Las Vegas, Anora also filmed on location in the city of sin. That includes a scene at the famed Little White Wedding Chapel on Las Vegas Boulevard, where Ani and Ivan get married. According to a report from NBC Las Vegas, the Chapel’s head minister, Diana Moran, played herself in the movie, as the wedding officiant.
Additional Vegas scenes were filmed at Fremont Street Experience and the Palms Casino Resort.