This year, the NYFCC awarded Julia Loktev’s five-and-a-half-hour documentary My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow Best Documentary. There were many good docs this year, it was a very strong year, but this one was undeniable. For me, there was no other choice for this award. It’s history presented in-real-time and was shot by Loktev – on the fly – sometimes fleeing from Putin’s police banging on the door – on her iPhone. Everyone we saw in the film, all independent journalists, had to flee Russia the month after the invasion of Ukraine. They had been declared “foreign agents” and “enemies of the people”. The dictator playbook with very real dangers. All of these people now live in exile. It was a pleasure to write the essay included in the program at last nights awards ceremony. Mikhail Baryshnikov presented the award, and basically flattened the room. Everyone was in awe of this monumental legendary star. It was a star-studded room but everyone was stunned into fangirl status, and of course director Loktev – and two of the women highlighted in My Undesirable Friends – as Russian women – were beside themselves.
Part II is coming, apparently, depicting “what happened next”, journalists in exile.
So I thought I’d share my essay here. Happy to bring in one of the Founders. If you’ve been around here from the beginning, you understand my feelings for those gents. They did what they could to avoid issues like the ones facing us now, as they worked to overthrow a King. They were imperfect men but they really did try to anticipate the future and provide guardrails. I find strength and comfort – and sadness – in their words. I need them now more than ever!
I know five-and-a-half hours sounds like a long time, but honestly, what else are you doing with your time? Something that rivals standing in solidarity with a free press hounded out of their own country?
NYFCC BEST NON-FICTION FILM: JULIA LOKTEV’S MY UNDESIRABLE FRIENDS: PART I — LAST AIR IN MOSCOW
“When will these dark times pass? How much longer do we have to endure this?”
These anguished questions, asked by one of the journalists, featured in Julia Loktev’s five-and-a-half-hour My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow, have yet to be answered. Loktev shot the film using her phone, and no crew, during the last months of 2021 into early 2022, leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The final date of footage is March 2, 2022, when the people we’ve met in the film flee the country.
The subjects in My Undesirable Friends are journalists in a perilous position. An independent press, free from state-mandated propaganda, had almost ceased to exist under Putin; and the situation worsened in early 2021, when the late Alexei Navalny, a powerful opposition leader, was arrested and imprisoned. The press was hounded, attacked, and labeled “foreign agents”.
Loktev, born in St. Petersburg, and raised in the United States, embeds herself with a friend group in Moscow who work at TV Rain, the last independent Russian-language television channel at the time of filming. My Undesirable Friends is often quite lively, and the people we meet have vivid personalities. The overwhelming feeling, though, is one of dread. The journalists know they have a target on their backs. One woman’s fiance was imprisoned and she’s not allowed to talk to him. Those who haven’t left Russia wait and worry. Fear is the oxygen they brethe.
Tyrants know what they’re doing when they suppress freedom of speech. It’s usually their first target. In 1722, a teenage Benjamin Franklin wrote: “Whoever would overthrow the Liberty of a Nation, must begin by subduing the Freeness of Speech.” In My Undesirable Friends we watch that happen.
What Loktev captures most of all is the tenacity and grit of her colleagues, and their willingness to put themselves in grave danger so they can speak the truth. Now more than ever, we can find courage in their example.
Trailer for My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow:
