The Sturgeon Queens

Russ and Daughters is a Lower East Side lox and herring emporium that has survived and thrived for 100 years. Produced to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the store’s founding by an immigrant Jewish family, this documentary features two of the original daughters for whom the store was named – now 100 and 92 years old – and interviews with prominent enthusiasts of the store including Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, actress Maggie Gyllenhaal, chef Mario Batali, New Yorker writer Calvin Trillin, and 60 Minutes correspondent Morley Safer. Rather than a conventional narrator, six colorful longtime fans of the store, all in their 80’s and 90’s, sit around a table of fish reading the script in the style of a Passover seder.