{"id":515223,"date":"2026-04-06T03:24:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T03:24:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/515223\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T03:24:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T03:24:18","slug":"how-my-undesirable-friends-captured-journalists-last-days-in-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/515223\/","title":{"rendered":"How ‘My Undesirable Friends’ Captured Journalists’ Last Days in Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Julia Loktev brought her camera to Russia, she didn\u2019t know that she would soon capture history. At least, not to the extent that she did.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a film where history happened as we were filming, which rarely happens. I mean, most docs are made about something that has already happened, and you\u2019re trying to figure out how to tell the story of something that happened in the past,\u201d Loktev told TheWrap. \u201cIn this case, I went to film something that was unfolding at this furious pace. There was no time between conception and execution. It was really \u2018Shoot now. Keep shooting. Get it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

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Now on Mubi, \u201cMy Undesirable Friends: Part I \u2014\u00a0Last Air in Moscow\u201d follows a series of Russian journalists (primarily young women) living in late 2021\/early 2022 Moscow. After being discredited by their state as \u201cforeign agents,\u201d reporters like Anna Nemzer (Loktev\u2019s longtime friend and co-director), Sonya Groysman and Irina Dolinina attempt to document the rapid rise of fascism in their country, not knowing a full-scale war with Ukraine looms just over the horizon.<\/p>\n

The result was a nearly 330-minute film (the first of two parts) chronicling the final days spent by a group of reporters and rebels in the country they called home.<\/p>\n

In one particularly sobering scene, a reporter laments, \u201cFor 20 years, a monster was growing in front of our eyes whom we all fed with our silence and our passivity.\u201d Loktev, who was born in Russia and raised in the U.S., is worried by how familiar the story she captured seems to developments back home under Donald Trump\u2019s second presidential administration.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur guy grew a little faster,\u201d Loktev said of Trump. \u201cHe was a little faster on the take.\u201d<\/p>\n

\""My\u201cMy Undesirable Friends: Part I \u2014\u00a0Last Air in Moscow\u201d (Courtesy of Mubi)<\/p>\n

\u201cMaking up for lost time\u201d<\/p>\n

When Loktev and Nemzer set out to make a film together, they couldn\u2019t know the full scope of what would come to Russia \u2014\u00a0and the world \u2014\u00a0in late 2021 and early 2022. All they could feel was the wind shifting in bad directions, with journalists being labeled \u201cundesirable\u201d as they reported the truth happening before their eyes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI jumped on a plane as soon as I got a Russian tourist visa and just started filming. At the time, I thought it was going to be a film about journalists facing a crackdown,\u201d she said. \u201cI ended up capturing this historic moment which led to a million people leaving Russia, this historic exodus of a huge number of the people that could have made it into a better society. They fled into exile when Russia started a full-scale criminal war in Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy Undesirable Friends,\u201d which released Friday on Mubi more than a year after its September 2024 premiere at New York Film Festival, marks the first film from Loktev since her 2011 feature \u201cThe Loneliest Planet.\u201d The film, shortlisted for the 2026 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, clocks in at nearly five and a half hours \u2014\u00a0and is only the first half of Loktev\u2019s planned \u201cMy Undesirable Friends\u201d duology.<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess I\u2019m making up for lost time,\u201d the filmmaker laughed. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t for lack of trying. I was struggling with writer\u2019s block, and then I had a fiction film where I really loved the script, and it was getting somewhere, and then COVID happened. That film took place in three countries, and that particular film, parts of it initially started out during the protest movement in Russia and kind of segued into this.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The journalists of \u201cMy Undesirable Friends\u201d work for the news outlet TV Rain, itself declared an \u201cundesirable\u201d news source and \u201cforeign agent\u201d by the Putin regime. TV Rain \u2014\u00a0and any reporter with these labels \u2014\u00a0is forced to preface all of its reporting with a lengthy disclaimer warning of its foreign agent status (a disclaimer Nemzer and her friends refer to as \u201cThe f\u2013kery\u201d).<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of them are incredibly young. What do you do when you\u2019re 23, when you\u2019re 26, and the state has declared you an enemy of the people, a foreign agent? It\u2019s a very natural response that you\u2019re gonna resist, you\u2019re gonna be like, \u2018Screw you! You called me a foreign agent? I\u2019m gonna make a \u2018Foreign Agent\u2019 T-shirt,\u2019\u201d Loktev said. \u201cAt the same time, it\u2019s incredibly painful because you\u00a0are\u00a0being shamed in the eyes of society. It\u2019s not funny at all, but so much of the film is about using dark humor, using joy, using community as part of resistance, because what else can you do? You can\u2019t let them get you completely.\u201d<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s the hard part. As Putin\u2019s regime hastens its discrediting of journalists and war in Ukraine, Nemzer (who has a husband and child) and her fellow reporters are forced to reckon with the changing face of their country \u2014\u00a0and the restrictions placed against them within it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important they love this place and are fighting for it, even though it\u2019s sliding into authoritarianism,\u201d Loktev said. \u201cThey\u2019re trying to still make it a little bit better. At what point do you give up on your country?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the question of the film: What does it feel like to be a decent person living under a bad government and trying to do your best to make it better?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Olga\u201cMy Undesirable Friends: Part I \u2014\u00a0Last Air in Moscow\u201d (Courtesy of Mubi)<\/p>\n

\u201cA film that keeps transforming\u201d<\/p>\n

Loktev said her film has been described in many ways: a horror, a thriller, even a hangout film (\u201cYeah, it\u2019s a hangout film about authoritarianism,\u201d she laughed). Despite the daunting length, Loktev insisted \u201cMy Undesirable Friends\u201d is \u201cthe most unmeditative five and a half hours of your life,\u201d a film meant to allow you to love and live with the people at its center fighting through tragedy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about life. It\u2019s about living through something. We all know what happened: Russia became increasingly fascist and started a war in Ukraine. You really don\u2019t need me to tell you. You can open a newspaper and we\u2019re done. We don\u2019t even need an hour and a half film, you can get it in 15 minutes. But what you get is the experience of what did it\u00a0feel like\u00a0to be living under this government, living your life every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Loktev noted that the feeling is becoming all the more familiar to Americans under Trump\u2019s second term. The filmmaker pointed to a Truth Social post a friend shared with her where Trump bragged about how the media has changed under his administration. Loktev initially thought the post was a joke.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s crazy. I mean, look, when I started making this film, it was a film very much about Russia, which was very much a faraway place, so it felt like, \u2018Oh, here\u2019s all these kind of strange things happening to nice people in a faraway country that has nothing to do with us here,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cBut this is a film that keeps transforming every day based on what\u2019s happening in the world.\u201d <\/p>\n

When we spoke, the U.S. had launched a major military attack on Iran<\/a> just over two weeks earlier. To Loktev, whose film depicts the early days of Russia\u2019s Ukrainian invasion in its final chapters, this made the comparisons all the more clear.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was kind of comforting myself saying, \u2018Well, Chapters 4 and 5 where you see this full-scale war, at least that\u2019s not so relevant (to the U.S.) That is still very specific about Russia invading Ukraine.\u2019 Then, of course, the last few weeks, we\u2019re understanding what it feels like to be in this country,\u201d she said.\u00a0\u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019re horrified enough, actually.\u00a0That\u2019s something I think about a lot. There\u2019s a passivity that I\u2019m startled by.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Ksenia\u201cMy Undesirable Friends: Part I \u2014\u00a0Last Air in Moscow\u201d (Courtesy of Mubi)<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll remember it as Eden\u201d<\/p>\n

As Putin\u2019s actions in Russia and Ukraine begin to further compound, Nemzer and her colleagues have no choice but to flee the country they call home. \u201cMy Undesirable Friends\u201d depicts a collection of reporters leaving for Istanbul, one of the few places they could still buy a ticket from Russia, in early 2022. Loktev would join them a day later, spending that night downloading footage to the cloud via hotel WiFi in case her hard drive got seized at the border.<\/p>\n

What they did from there will be showcased in her follow-up film, \u201cMy Undesirable Friends: Part II \u2014\u00a0Exile.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m so excited about \u2018Part II.\u2019 It\u2019s almost done. I\u2019m just shooting one last scene where one of the characters will likely be sentenced in absentia to prison. Cheerful things,\u201d Loktev remarked. \u201cI continued shooting immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Loktev joined her friends in Istanbul, she found a collection of reporters whose lives had changed overnight. No longer did they know in which country they would lay their heads. They had no jobs, no working bank cards. As one character says early in \u201cMy Undesirable Friends: Part I,\u201d despite the troubles faced at the time, \u201cOctober 2021 \u2014\u00a0A year from now, we\u2019ll remember it as Eden.\u201d<\/p>\n

How true that was.<\/p>\n

\u201c(\u2018Part II\u2019) follows them as they get back up on their feet and continue to work as independent journalists to bring the truth to Russians. They talk about Russian war crimes in Ukraine. They offer an alternative to Putin\u2019s propaganda,\u201d Loktev said. \u201cThen exile becomes indefinite, and they all keep working for years for the future of a country to which they may not return for decades.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy Undesirable Friends: Part I \u2014\u00a0Last Air in Moscow\u201d is available on Mubi now.<\/p>\n

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