When Russian-born American filmmaker Loktev began shooting \u201cMy Undesirable Friends\u201d in 2021, she didn\u2019t imagine how its subjects\u2019 struggle would anticipate autocratic pressure on the free press in the United States.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t making it for Trump\u2019s America,\u201d she says. \u201cI was making it in somewhat reasonable Biden\u2019s America. But so many things in the film that seemed like they were in a place far away started to have resonance.\u201d Loktev shot the film on an iPhone, which evokes a casual, intimate vibe \u2014 at least until the story accelerates into a thriller. \u201cIt\u2019s not really fly-on-the-wall, it\u2019s fly-on-your-nose,\u201d she quips. The journalists, who write and produce news for the independent outlet TV Rain, are first branded as foreign agents, then forced to flee the country as the war begins.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1767706089_962_.jpeg\")
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Ksenia Mironova in the documentary \u201cMy Undesirable Friends: Part I \u2014 Last Air in Moscow.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Julia Loktev)<\/p>\n
\u201cI opened up the newspaper last night and started reading about the \u201860 Minutes\u2019 piece,\u201d she says, referring to CBS editor in chief Bari Weiss\u2019 controversial decision last month to stop the airing of the newsmagazine\u2019s report on the CECOT maximum-security prison in El Salvador, where the United States has sent deported Venezuelan and Salvadoran migrants. \u201cRussia also didn\u2019t start by jailing journalists. They started by suing journalists, by using economic means to shut down journalism \u2026. Where it goes, we don\u2019t know, but it is something that is feeling increasingly familiar.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now 88 years old and still on the beat, Hersh, the Pulitzer Prize-winning subject of \u201cCover-Up,\u201d has battled the establishment since he began his career. And not just political leaders like disgraced President Nixon, whose 1974 exit from office was likely hastened by Hersh\u2019s coverage of the Watergate scandal, and whose famous assessment of the journalist the documentary revisits: \u201cI mean, the son-of-a-b\u2014 is a son-of-a-b\u2014, but he\u2019s usually right, isn\u2019t he?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe film has several themes, one of them being government atrocities and lies and cover-ups and impunity,\u201d says Poitras, who won an Oscar in 2015 for \u201cCitizenfour,\u201d her portrait of National Security Administration whistleblower Edward Snowden. \u201cBut another one is journalism and institutions not publishing stories that are clearly newsworthy, that look badly or reflect negatively on this country.\u201d<\/p>\n
The film offers an example in detailing how Hersh fought to get his breakthrough My Lai story into print. \u201cHe went to Life magazine, and they said no at first,\u201d Poitras adds. \u201cOnly later did they publish the story when the photos came out.\u201d Hersh\u2019s recourse was to syndicate the piece through the independent Dispatch News Service, run by his literary agent David Obst. \u201cIt became the biggest story around the world, but that took time,\u201d Poitras notes. \u201cIt says something about the media that it continues to today, across every administration.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Inmates](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1767706089_825_.jpeg\")
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Easterling Correctional Facility in Clio, Ala., as seen in the documentary \u201cThe Alabama Solution.\u201d<\/p>\n
(HBO)<\/p>\n
Six years in the making, \u201cThe Alabama Solution\u201d is an unsparing indictment of inhumanity and dysfunction in the state\u2019s prison system, where more than 1,300 deaths have been reported since 2019. The point of view belongs to a group of inmate activists, who document abuses on contraband cellphones.<\/p>\n
\u201cIndependent journalism, free of government oversight, is something we all have accepted as a core democratic principle,\u201d says Kaufman, who directed with Jarecki, a 2004 Academy Award winner for \u201cCapturing the Friedmans.\u201d \u201cBut when it comes to prisons, we have historically surrendered that principle \u2026 we are fine allowing the government-approved narrative.\u201d<\/p>\n
As seen in the documentary\u2019s opening scenes, the project began after the filmmakers were invited to film a barbecue at the Easterling Correctional Facility, one of 14 prisons in the system. They were approached by prisoners who told them disturbing things. \u201cThey said, \u2018You need to look more deeply into this.\u2019 They were quite specific,\u201d Jarecki says. The goal was \u201cto see if it was possible to make a film that was coming directly from the men inside.\u201d<\/p>\n
The four men who became the film\u2019s principal subjects had been using the cellphones for several years as they fought to bring attention to their plight. \u201cThey took great risk in speaking with us, and in participating in this film,\u201d Kaufman says. \u201cThey did that because they truly believe in the power of the Fourth Estate. When they felt that the state had failed them \u2026 when they felt like the courts had failed them, when they felt like even the federal government had failed them \u2026 they turn to the court of public opinion. They turn to journalism.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As independent journalism comes under increasing threat worldwide, a trio of Oscar-shortlisted documentaries offer revealing perspectives on risk-taking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":122132,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64071,7363,1924,7244,64066,24822,48,52,51,64067,47,50,49,64068,4840,64070,64065,64069,3044,45692,72],"class_list":["post-122131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-charlotte-kaufman","tag-country","tag-film","tag-group","tag-independent-journalism","tag-journalist","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-laura-poitras","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-oscar-shortlisted-documentary","tag-power","tag-prison-system","tag-seymour-hersh","tag-state-propaganda","tag-story","tag-subject","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}