
Operation Odessa
Ludwig Fainberg, known in Miami as "Tarzan," ran a strip club that doubled as a meeting point for Russian mobsters, Cuban smugglers, and Colombian cartel operators. The film follows his rise from Soviet emigre to fixer for the Cali cartel, culminating in a scheme almost too strange to be true: brokering the sale of a decommissioned Soviet submarine so traffickers could move cocaine underwater. Interviews with Fainberg himself, alongside former DEA agents, retired mobsters, and journalists who covered the case, reconstruct how a small-time hustler talked his way into negotiations with Russian naval officers, Colombian narcos, and undercover federal agents simultaneously. Archival photos, home video, and news footage from Miami's cocaine-boom years fill out the period detail. The submarine deal eventually collapses under its own absurdity, but not before revealing how porous the lines were between the collapsing Soviet military, American law enforcement, and cartel money. Fainberg's own account, delivered with visible relish, is the film's most valuable and most unreliable source.