With it being thirteen long years since her last brilliant feature The Loneliest Planet, Julia Loktev finally returned last fall with a five-hour documentary––the first of a two-part project. World-premiering at the New York Film Festival, the intimate, intricate My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow finds Loktev capturing Putin’s assault on independent journalism in Russia, which was only exacerbated by his full-on attack on Ukraine. The film, now set to open on August 15 beginning at YNC’s Film Forum, captures Loktev documenting a group of her friends fighting the good fight running TV Rain, Russia’s last remaining independent news channel. Ahead of the release, the first trailer has arrived.
Here’s the synopsis: “Moscow, winter 2021: At TV Rain, the only remaining independent channel, young journalists have been branded “foreign agents”— targeted for surveillance or worse, and required to tag their reporting with a disclaimer that they are serving foreign powers. Regardless: Ksyusha furiously produces and edits stories to distract herself from her fellow-journalist fiancé’s imprisonment; Anya hosts everyday heroes of resistance on her interview show, while shielding both her sanity and her young daughter from the regime’s relentless “fuckery”; Sonya produces the “Hi, You’re a Foreign Agent” podcast at her kitchen table while beholding her empty living room (why buy a sofa when who knows what will happen to her?); Alesya fends off anxiety that her office has been bugged, while hiding her relationship with her girlfriend from her traditional mother. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is just weeks away, as these Gen-Z heroines confront propagandist absurdity and personal endangerment, fighting for the soul of a country they love to the bitter end.”
Luke Hicks said in his NYFF review, “Through Loktev’s run-and-gun immersion in their world, we begin to understand how the groundwork is laid to propagandize and miseducate the masses, a huge swath of whom see straight through it. A Russian website for hiring nannies is branded with a state banner: “Ukrainian nannies have attacked Moscow!” it claims, demanding anyone coming to the site hire only Russian-born nannies. This is how it happens. The journalists compare the signing in and subsequent enacting of corrupt laws by the Kremlin to “lawful” criminalization of free speech by the Third Reich.”
See the trailer below and read our interview with Loktev here.