Filmmaker Julia Loktev’s voice is the first we hear in her epic new documentary. Over a nighttime shot of Moscow, she warns, “The world you’re about to see no longer exists. None of us knew what was about to happen.” For the next five-and-a-half hours, My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow more than lives up to that ominous opening. Loktev’s film chronicles the Russian government’s systematic crackdown on journalists in late 2021 and early 2022 as Vladimir Putin plots his invasion of Ukraine. Shooting by herself with just an iPhone, Loktev spent weeks at a time shadowing the young women and men of TV Rain, the country’s last independent news channel. The result is a gripping vérité portrait of citizens under siege by a tyrannical leader stripping away their freedoms.
But since its international premiere at last year’s New York Film Festival, My Undesirable Friends (which makes its U.S. theatrical debut in New York City’s Film Forum on Friday) has become much more than a movie about Russia. Speaking over Zoom from New York, Loktev (who grew up in Russia before moving to the States when she was nine) is still absorbing her documentary’s wide-reaching political implications — and how the film is sounding an alarm bell for what’s taking place in America under Trump.
“My roommates from Iran, friends who grew up under the dictatorship in Argentina, people from China — they all said, ‘This is about us,’” Loktev says. “‘This is what it feels like to live under an authoritarian regime. We’d never seen anything that shows it so well.’ And now, Americans are going, ‘Oh, it’s about us.’”
The 55-year-old filmmaker had not planned on making such a sweeping yet intimate portrait when she first reached out to her friend, TV Rain host Anna Nemzer. The initial spark was an August 2021 New York Times piece about young Russian independent journalists being labeled “foreign agents” by Putin’s regime, which demanded they run a ridiculously long disclaimer before their segments identifying themselves as such. “The important part was that [the journalists] were fighting back with humor,” Loktev recalls. For example, some of those reporters responded by launching a snarky podcast called Hi, You’re a Foreign Agent. “That’s when I contacted Anna Nemzer and said, ‘Let’s do something about this.’”
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Starting in October of that year, Loktev began filming Nemzer and her colleagues, who felt the weight of Putin’s restrictive rule but had no sense that the war on Ukraine was imminent. “The impending doom was definitely there from the start,” says Loktev, “but the doom that people expected [was] different than the doom that happened. They thought that what awaited them was an internal crackdown aimed at them. They were all trying to figure out, ‘How long can we keep working as journalists here?’ They kept saying they love [Russia] more than Putin loves it and they keep trying to fight inside the country.”
Although Loktev directed the 1998 documentary Moment of Impact, she most recently made the feature films Day Night Day Night (starring Luisa Williams as a suicide bomber) and The Loneliest Planet (with Gael García Bernal and Hani Furstenberg playing lovers on a fateful backpacking trip). And while My Undesirable Friends is a real-life drama, it unspools like a paranoid thriller, so Loktev approached it with a narrative flair.
“People describe it as very different things,” she says, from a horror film to a reality show to a Russian novel to a dark comedy. “I think it’s all of those things. What it’s not is a conventional documentary.” The film eschews dry talking-head interviews from political experts, instead presenting fly-on-the-wall encounters with these independent journalists — many of them women in their twenties — as they do their jobs and then blow off steam during their off hours. As Loktev describes it, “There is a tension that builds, but meanwhile, you’re with these people who are hanging out. They’re quite funny as horrible, horrible things are happening to them.”
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Unfolding over five chapters — three set before the Ukraine invasion, two in the midst of it — My Undesirable Friends details Putin’s chilling effect on Loktev’s subjects, and different individuals become the main character across the movie’s runtime, including journalist Ksenia Mironova, a sweet but dogged reporter whose fiancé, fellow journalist Ivan Safronov, has been imprisoned. TV Rain covers massive protests in the wake of the 2021 incarceration of anti-Putin activist Alexei Navalny, which seem to suggest a sea change within the country — only to have the government crush dissent. The movie has the suffocating feel of a hand tightening around a throat as these women keep reporting while simultaneously worrying if they should flee Russia to avoid arrest, their anxiety captured nearly in real time.
Inevitably, Americans will notice disturbing similarities between Putin and Trump, who has repeatedly threatened the press, challenged democratic norms, and ordered numerous detainments. Loktev, who is nearing completion of a second five-hour documentary that details what became of the exiled journalists, understands why American viewers will watch her film looking for clues to what might happen here. “We are so hungry for things that help us understand the current moment,” she says. “Part of living under an authoritarian [government] is it does make you feel like you’re going crazy — it doesn’t make sense. [Watching the movie] is a way of understanding, ‘Everything you’re feeling is normal under these circumstances.’”
Because she stayed close to the ground, documenting this pivotal political moment from the perspective of the journalists she followed, My Undesirable Friends is a powerfully emotional experience. And by cataloging everyday life under authoritarianism, she exposes the crushing normalcy that’s never depicted in Hollywood portrayals of dystopian governments.
Olga Churakova and Sonya Groysman
Julia Loktev
“[TV Rain reporter] Sonya [Groysman] interviews this anthropologist: ‘It’s a strange feeling because there’s nice cafes everywhere and Moscow looks great and you can get anything delivered. Meanwhile, my friends are being arrested.’ And the anthropologist explains to her that we’re used to seeing films like V for Vendetta, which make it look like, in an authoritarian society, everyone suffers equally and everyone’s miserable,” Loktev says. “But actually this is what it looks like to live under authoritarianism — it looks really nice for a lot of people, and there are matcha lattes everywhere. I think about this every day now that I walk out in New York. My neighborhood looks really nice — meanwhile, there are people in unmarked vans with masks snatching people off the street.”
As frightening as the world around Loktev’s subjects is, what’s remarkable is how full of life they are, the filmmaker emphasizing their youthful energy, dark sense of humor, and endearing obsessions. (A running subplot is Mironova’s love for Harry Potter, culminating in her meeting Draco Malfoy himself, Tom Felton.) But Loktev is quick to correct anyone who perceives My Undesirable Friends as a snapshot of idealists under duress.
“You can’t really be idealistic in 2021 Russia,” she counters. “Navalny has already been poisoned. There’s been huge crackdowns by the police. People that go to protests get beaten with batons. It’s not idealism, that’s not the right word. It’s a persistence despite the odds.” Loktev points to TV Rain’s 2021 New Year’s Eve broadcast, which plays out during one chapter of My Undesirable Friends. It’s a defiantly celebratory evening, despite the journalists’ fear that they could end up in prison soon. “The title of the New Year’s show is We’re Not Dispersing. That’s incredibly inspiring because it’s not idealism at all — it’s a necessity to keep going.”
If My Undesirable Friends were merely a close accounting of Russia’s dismantling of a free society, it would be stunning enough. But by positioning this as a story of a younger generation refusing to cede their liberties to tyrants, Loktev has made a film about resistance, putting a human face on the daily struggles concerned citizens must endure to take back their country. For her, the film’s message can be defined by one incident.
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“It was the closing of Memorial, Russia’s oldest human rights organization, dedicated to preserving the memory of political terror going back to Stalin and also looking at political prisoners today,” Loktev recalls. “Right before New Year’s Eve, Russia shut it down for ridiculous [reasons]. The way that Memorial dealt with being shut down is they had a holiday party that night. And this human rights lawyer stood up and said, ‘Let joy and laughter also be a part of our resistance.’
“I think [it’s] incredibly important not to become dispirited,” Loktev continues. “That’s what you see in the film. I always say, for a film about political repression in a very cold place, it’s strangely funny and warm. Life and warmth and laughter is also a form of resistance — that’s what keeps you from giving up.”