25-02-2025
‘My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow' Review: Julia Loktev's Piercing Chronicle of Russian Journalists Targeted by Their Own Government
A despotic leader reigning with absolute power. A crackdown on investigative reporters. A government consisting only of ardent loyalists. Federal agents with access to the bank records and personal information of private citizens. Journalists critical of the regime who are harassed, threatened and face possible legal action.
What country are we talking about here?
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If what happens in Julia Loktev's intimate and incisive 5 ½ hour documentary My Undesirable Friends sounds familiar, you may be surprised to learn that it's not, in fact, about the United States since the start of President Donald Trump's second term, but about Russia back in 2021.
It was then that Loktev followed several reporters in the months leading up to the invasion of Ukraine, chronicling the last vestiges of an anti-authoritarian resistance that fled when the war broke out. Highly informative and a bit exhausting, this in-depth look at journalism in a dying democracy warrants our attention — as long as you're willing to give it all 324 minutes of your time. It's especially worth sticking around to the finale to see how bad things can get, and what perhaps lies in store for America one day.
The full title of the movie is My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow, and it's the first half of a diptych that Loktev began shooting in December 2021. (The other half will premiere later this year.) Divided into five chronological chapters, the doc highlights a handful of investigative journos, all of them women, who were deemed 'foreign agents' under a law designed to crush any opposition against President Vladimir Putin.
Forced to comply with punishing regulations and facing the constant threat of arrest, we watch these brave young souls persist in their jobs until the bitter end. They continue writing articles, shooting and editing news segments, and releasing podcasts until the fateful day of February 24, 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine and their lives changed forever.
Loktev, who was born in St. Petersburg and grew up mostly in the U.S., accesses the group via her old friend Anna Nemzer (credited as co-director), a journalist hosting two shows on the independent news channel TV Rain. When the documentary begins, the network still operates freely in Russia but is subject to draconian guidelines, one requiring that a message be broadcast before each program stating that everything is lies spread by foreign agents.
Despite all the oppressive measures, Nemzer and the other dedicated reporters continue to work, often in clever and discerning ways that manage to make light of an awful situation. 'It's like a wake, but a fun one,' is how one of them describes the ambience. Nemzer is decidedly more blunt about their predicament: 'Everything happening now is the rape of justice,' she tells Loktev, explaining that sooner or later they will all be forced to 'choose between criminal prosecution and emigration.'
Filming their every outspoken thought and conversation whether in the newsroom, at home, on the street or in cars driving around frigid Moscow, the director channels the growing sense of dread as the government crackdown accelerates and the war nears. At times the movie feels so raw and unedited, it's as if Loktev dumped all her footage onto the table without shaping it into a definitive cut. Perhaps a leaner two-hour version would have yielded something more dynamic, though the point of My Undesirable Friends isn't to entertain us, but to capture every detail of a tiny democratic movement that was doomed to fail.
Alongside Nemzer, it's worth mentioning the names of the other reporters featured, because in one way or another they're all heroes: Ksenia Mironova, Sonya Groysman, Olga Churakova, Irina Dolinina, Aleysa Marokhovskaya and Elena Kostyuchenko.
Each of them struggles with their foreign agent status, hiring lawyers to represent them in kangaroo courts where the verdict has been pre-determined. At times they break down in tears, unable to deal with the constant harassment in their professional and personal lives. Their phones and homes are tapped, they receive threatening calls and texts, cars follow them around town and random accusations put them in jail. And of course they also face assassination, which has already happened to several journalists — as well as to opposition leaders like Boris Nemtsov, for whom they hold a vigil that leads to yet more arrests.
While Nemzer is the main character in the doc's early segments, we gradually shift to 'Ksyusha' Mironova in the latter sections. She's a young and fearless TV Rain reporter, as well as the fiancée of journalist Ivan Safronov, who was jailed over a year earlier and is awaiting sentencing. (He will eventually be sentenced to 22 years in prison.) When Russia invades Ukraine, it's clear that Mironova will have to flee along with her friends, leaving behind a loved one she may never get to see again.
The doc's engrossing final chapters, entitled 'The Expected Impossible' and 'Don't Say War,' reveal the sense of dread pervading the group as Russian troops amass at the Ukrainian border and war seems inevitable, even if some continue to hold out hope it won't happen. Then one night in February, Nemzer is driving through Moscow and notices fireworks exploding above the Kremlin. She knows all too well what this means: The last time that happened was when Russia invaded Crimea back in 2014.
Loktev, who previously directed a pair of subtly powerful indie thrillers, Day Night Day Night (2006) and The Loneliest Planet (2011), delivers a slow and sweeping real-world thriller whose aftershocks are still being felt today. Her insider's look at totalitarian Russia bears, at times, an unsettling resemblance to what we're now seeing emerge from the new administration of Trump, who has never hidden his admiration for despots like Putin — nor his hatred of journalists daring to criticize him.
Yet despite the sense that things will get worse, the women at the heart of My Undesirable Friends offer us a case study in resilience. Putting their own lives at risk, they combat the regime with intelligence, humor and lots of foul-mouthed Russian slang, until they're forced to pack their bags and bring the fight elsewhere. Their lucid, world-weary attitude is perhaps best summed up by a reporter's remark at one of the gang's many drunken gatherings before the fall: 'We've read books. We know what comes next.'
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