{"id":215841,"date":"2026-09-05T05:18:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T05:18:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/215841\/"},"modified":"2026-09-05T05:18:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T05:18:16","slug":"my-undesirable-friends-director-on-russias-press-crackdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/215841\/","title":{"rendered":"‘My Undesirable Friends’ Director on Russia’s Press Crackdown"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIf her epic, Oscar-shortlisted documentary \u201cMy Undesirable Friends: Part 1\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Last Air In Moscow\u201d pulled off an astonishing feat, chronicling the last gasps of press freedom in Vladimir Putin\u2019s Russia in real time, docmaker Julia Loktev<\/a> somehow manages to raise the stakes in the film\u2019s arresting sequel.<\/p>\n

\n\tPremiering out of competition in the Venice Open strand of the Venice Film Festival<\/a>, \u201cMy Undesirable Friends: Part 2\u00a0\u2014 Exile\u201d offers a remarkable bookend to its predecessor. Following \u201cLast Air\u2019s\u201d subjects in the aftermath of Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Loktev offers an intimate portrait of journalists under threat as they flee their homeland and attempt to rebuild their shattered lives abroad.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking to\u00a0Variety\u00a0over Zoom, Loktev unpacks the relationship between the two films while insisting the second part is \u201ca\u00a0much more complex story.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt takes place over four and a half years versus four and a half months,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd it\u2019s a much more emotional story. It\u2019s people who have had to leave their country on a moment\u2019s notice.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBeginning in the fall of 2021, the first chapter of Loktev\u2019s documentary epic charted the months leading up to the Ukraine invasion. Part two begins just two days later with her subjects in flight, some leaving Moscow within hours of learning that their employer, TV Rain, the independent news station that had been designated an \u201cundesirable organization\u201d by the Kremlin, was set to be raided by the police.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe New York-based Loktev, who was born in the former Soviet Union but emigrated to the U.S. as a child with her family, admits that she didn\u2019t expect the documentary she\u2019d set out to make five years ago would become so Tolstoyan in scope, ultimately spanning nearly 12 hours across 10 chapters. (Part 2 will screen in Venice with an intermission.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe director initially planned to chronicle a group of independent journalists who had been declared \u201cforeign agents\u201d by the Russian government. Looking back, Loktev says, \u201cI had absolutely no idea that I [would be] capturing history.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSeveral months after filming began, Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine. Independent media, already imperiled due to the Kremlin\u2019s crackdown on dissent, was all but outlawed. Effectively branded enemies of the state, the journalists whose lives she documented in \u201cLast Air in Moscow\u201d scattered\u00a0across Europe and the U.S., with Loktev filming \u201cExile\u201d as they settled into new lives from Istanbul to Amsterdam, from Prague to New York.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was, Loktev says, a \u201cstrange nomadic existence.\u201d Armed with little more than her trusted iPhone X, she captures her subjects at their most unguarded, revealing moments of fear, vulnerability and, above all, courage as they navigate what she describes as the new \u201cnormal not normal\u201d of their lives.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt will be difficult for American audiences to watch \u201cMy Undesirable Friends\u201d and not see echoes of our country\u2019s own rightward tilt during this Trump presidency, even though Loktev began filming \u201cdeep in the Biden era.\u201d \u201cIt seemed very far away,\u201d she says, of the second Trump administration and its sweeping assaults against civil liberties.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a scene from the film, one of her protagonists shares a message she composed to her younger self: \u201cStay alarmed, be hysterical if you need to, and know that it\u2019s very easy to lose your country.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s a warning echoed by Loktev.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe have to be very aware of the fear where we internalize the pressures.\u00a0Where you don\u2019t say something you could have said. Where you don\u2019t do something you could have done,\u201d she says. \u201cI think we\u2019re all plenty anxious now\u2026.Hopefully that doesn\u2019t become an anxiety that is paralyzing. It should be an anxiety that is mobilizing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If her epic, Oscar-shortlisted documentary \u201cMy Undesirable Friends: Part 1\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Last Air In Moscow\u201d pulled off an astonishing feat,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":215842,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[131],"tags":[96523,96524,60827,328],"class_list":["post-215841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vladimir-putin","tag-documentaries-to-watch","tag-julia-loktev","tag-venice-film-festival","tag-vladimir-putin"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/117216746099895864","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}