It might initially seem like a hard sell, convincing someone to tune into a 321-minute film about a gaggle of dissident Russian journalists that functions as an all-encompassing portrait of young free-thinkers under the tightening vise of fascism. But think of it this way: If each half-hour rabbit hole of doomscrolling you’d go down this week were instead redirected toward watching one the best films of last year, the five-and-a-half-hours of My Undesirable Friends: Part I—Last Air In Moscow not only becomes accessible, but an invigorating alternative to staring into the void of digital nihilism. Finally widely available in the U.S., streaming this week on Mubi, Russian-American director Julia Loktev’s film is an entrenched, incredibly humanizing look at the best of us—the bitter-end rebels who love their country, love each other, and love the work it takes to stand up for what’s right. It’s also a movie that, no matter where you live, has become so timely that its “foreign agents” (as Vladimir Putin’s regime dubs them) are instantly recognizable as the kinds of everyday people protesting, spreading information, walking the street, and otherwise bearing witness to keep their communities safe and their governments accountable.
Though Loktev’s film documents the long lead-up and quickly escalating final days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—the conflict and its surrounding propaganda being the subject of many documentaries, including the most recent Oscar-winning feature—by virtue of its thoroughness, My Undesirable Friends wasn’t supposed to be about the war when filming began in 2021. In fact, it’s also less about the crackdown of Putin’s warmongering administration and more about those under increased scrutiny for trying to tell the truth about it. It’s about Anna Nemzer, Ksenia Mironova, Sonya Groysman, Olga Churakova, Irina Dolinina, and the other young women who—because of a mandate from the Russian Ministry Of Justice, which has placed them on a special watchlist—-must disclose all their finances and preempt their every social media post, video broadcast, and published piece of writing with a prewritten disclosure:
“This news media/material was created and/or disseminated by a foreign mass media performing the functions of a foreign agent and/or a Russian legal entity performing the functions of a foreign agent.”
My Undesirable Friends came about because two of these newly dubbed second-class citizens, Groysman and Churakova, host a podcast, Hi, You’re A Foreign Agent, where they talk about what life is like as official “undesirables.” Any relationship with an international company—like Patreon, for example—becomes evidence of unpatriotic activity and Western influence. Obviously any Russian writer or news anchor who doesn’t work for the government is actually working for some mysterious and malevolent third party, disseminating Fake News to further the ends of this opaque Other. At least, that’s what the Russian government wants its citizens to think, strapping this linguistic muzzle onto independent journalists to scare off advertisers and readers alike.
It’s laughable, and the subjects of My Undesirable Friends certainly laugh a lot about it (and cry in equal measure), but it’s also terrifying and terrifyingly close to home. As news organizations like CBS and, soon, CNN fall to far-right oligarchs, and disreputable mouthpieces like Newsmax have better access to the White House than the wire services, the crackdown on communication loses any of the “Wow, aren’t things bad over there” novelty it may have still had. The plight of TV Rain, the indie outlet where most of My Undesirable Friends‘ subjects work, is the plight of journalism at large, summed into a worst-case scenario for the free press. The problem of media literacy, of a skeptical readership unlikely to mindlessly swallow the party line, is more prominent than ever. Russia used its military aggression to escalate censorship and arrest “internal enemies”; the film documenting the fallout in extensive detail is coming out in the wake of the United States and Israel starting a war with Iran.
This closeness to home hurts, the kind of blinding pain inflicted by catching a sunlit mirror at the wrong angle. But beyond this discomfort—and beyond its intimidating runtime—is revelation. My Undesirable Friends, which will get a second part documenting the journalists after they all flee their country, offers an intimate look at history in motion, some of the most compelling heroes the cinema will have all year, and, perhaps most importantly for audiences watching a version of this narrative play out in their own homes, hope. Loktev achieves this not through didacticism or rah-rah voiceover or otherwise #resistance posting, but by getting so close to her dogged, depressed, broke, chain-smoking journalist subjects that we can’t help but care for them.
Keeping her camera close to the faces of these women, Loktev intertwines their emotions and ideals. Mironova’s heartbroken and furious after her still-imprisoned journalist fiancé was snatched in a raid and held without any communication for months. Nemzer’s growing disillusioned, now resigned to jump through any absurd hoop to get the good word out, the least of which is inserting that ridiculous disclosure onto every innocuous Instagram post. Loktev’s literal closeness to this small community, spending more time in their crappy apartments than in their newsroom, breaks down any remaining artifice. It’s clear that when these women vocally cling to their beliefs (and their sanity) as their country continues to turn against them, they mean what they say. A cynical, weathered, black humor thinly coats these true believers, these rare members of a dwindling breed: people who still care about the integrity of the written word—about the truth.
As we’ve seen, and continue to see, these are people who get targeted early, alongside minorities of every kind. Controlling the media, or at least trying to silence the parts you can’t control by throwing legalese or money at them, is a key step for dictatorships. Turning the journalists who make up the scary bugbear of The Media into recognizable people, into neighbors and friends and loved ones and coworkers, is a key step to undermining this institutional villainization. Loktev’s film immerses us into the ground-level context surrounding the Russian resistance, but her own affection for her subjects—her undesirable friends, who look very much like the friends holding signs at the Broadview ICE Detention Center and blowing whistles on the streets of Minneapolis and setting off fireworks in Alvarado—is the contagious, affecting, enthralling core that translates the film across countries and cultures.
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