{"id":268639,"date":"2026-01-28T16:42:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T16:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/268639\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T16:42:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T16:42:11","slug":"my-undesirable-friends-and-upcoming-sequel-acquired-by-mubi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/268639\/","title":{"rendered":"‘My Undesirable Friends’ And Upcoming Sequel Acquired By Mubi"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEXCLUSIVE: Mubi<\/a> is going all in on Julia Loktev<\/a>\u2019s acclaimed nonfiction epic My Undesirable Friends.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe global distributor, streaming service and production company announced it is acquiring both part one of Loktev\u2019s film, titled My Undesirable Friends: Part I \u2013 Last Air in Moscow, as well as its upcoming sequel: My Undesirable Friends: Part II \u2013 Exile. The films are set to debut exclusively on Mubi this year.<\/p>\n

\n\tPart I of Loktev\u2019s opus premiered at the 2024 New York Film Festival and earned a place on this year\u2019s Oscar shortlist for Best Documentary Feature. It also won Best Documentary Feature at the Gotham Awards, and top documentary honors from the National Society of Film Critics, the New York Film Critics Circle, and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. It\u2019s nominated for Best Documentary Feature at next month\u2019s Film Independent Spirit Awards.<\/p>\n

\n\tLoktev was born in Russia and immigrated to the U.S. at age 9. She returned to Moscow to work on a documentary project about the last few remaining independent new organizations in Russia, little realizing events would soon imperil the women at the heart of her film.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"'My<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018My Undesirable Friends: Part I \u2013 Last Air in Moscow\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMUBI\/Argot Pictures<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIn My Undesirable Friends: Part I \u2013 Last Air in Moscow, what begins as an intimate portrait of Russian independent journalists facing persecution by Putin\u2019s regime takes a drastic turn when Russia starts a full-scale war in Ukraine and the journalists are all forced into exile,\u201d notes a release. \u201cThe film offers a front row seat to how authoritarianism impacts the lives of those who resist, which becomes all the more globally relevant every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe release continues, \u201cThe documentary follows Alesya Marokhovskaya, Anna Nemzer, Elena Kostyuchenko, Irina Dolinina, Ksenia Mironova, Olga Churakova and Sonya Groysman. My Undesirable Friends: Part II \u2014 Exile picks up with the characters immediately after they leave Russia, and follows them from country to country, as they struggle with shame and accountability for a war they all oppose.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Director<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDirector Julia Loktev at the 62nd New York Film Festival on October 6, 2024.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDia Dipasupil\/Getty Images for FLC<\/p>\n

\n\tLoktev\u2019s directing credits including fiction and nonfiction films. The Loneliest Planet, a 2011 drama starring Gael Garc\u00eda Bernal, earned the Grand Jury Prize at the AFI Film Festival. Her 2006 crime thriller Day Night Day Night premiered at Cannes in Directors Fortnight. Loktev\u2019s documentary Moment of Impact (1998) won the Sundance Film Festival Documentary Directing Award and the Grand Prize at Cin\u00e9ma du Re\u00e9l.<\/p>\n

\n\tMy Undesirable Friends: Part I \u2013 Last Air in Moscow runs an impressive 5 hours, 24 minutes.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen I started making My Undesirable Friends, I had no idea I would be capturing history,\u201d Loktev said in a statement. \u201cI also never imagined the story would become so urgent and so relatable for so many now. It\u2019s a film about a country sliding into authoritarianism, and about those who resist, and speaking as an American, every day it hits closer to home. I\u2019ve seen critics describe it as a thriller, a disaster film, a hangout film, a love story, and I think they\u2019re all right. For months, as word about My Undesirable Friends has spread, people from all over the world have been asking me, \u2018Where can I see it?\u2019 I\u2019m so incredibly excited the film has found a home with Mubi and that audiences internationally will be able to watch it soon.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe title My Undesirable Friends refers to an official designation in Russia: the Kremlin slaps the term \u201cundesirable organization\u201d on any group that it disfavors, including independent news media stations like Rain TV, as well as human rights groups like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch Moscow, the International Federation for Human Rights, and hundreds of other organizations.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201c\u2019Undesirable organization\u2019 is actually a legal classification in Russia,\u201d Loktev told Deadline in a recent interview<\/a>. \u201cRussia has now deemed almost all independent media as undesirable organizations along with many, many civil rights organizations, NGOs, educational institutions; things like Greenpeace have been declared undesirable organizations, a few universities like Bard College [in the U.S.], Yale\u2026 The list of undesirable organizations grows every day, as does the list of \u2018extremists\u2019 and \u2018terrorists.\u2019 Russia has basically declared independent media to be undesirable, journalism to be undesirable.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tAsked why Russia\u2019s president would move aggressively against so many institutions, Loktev told Deadline, \u201cPutin is afraid of people knowing the truth. Putin is afraid of people speaking the truth about the war. Putin is afraid of opposition. Putin is afraid of anything that is not propaganda.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EXCLUSIVE: Mubi is going all in on Julia Loktev\u2019s acclaimed nonfiction epic My Undesirable Friends. The global distributor,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182195,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[93,61,60,98926,270,56063,98927],"class_list":{"0":"post-268639","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-julia-loktev","12":"tag-movies","13":"tag-mubi","14":"tag-my-undesirable-friends-part-1-the-last-air-in-moscow"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}