“The world you’re about to see no longer exists. None of us knew what was about to happen.”
Writer-director Julia Loktev––whose 13-year hiatus from filmmaking has left cinephiles in a curious stupor––has returned, and it was worth the wait. My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow marks a significant shift for the Russian-American filmmaker, whose two enigmatic fiction features from 2006 and 2011 bear no resemblance to this: a five-and-a-half hour documentary (this is only “Part I,” mind you) that follows the last independent journalists on the ground in Moscow in the days leading up to and just after Russia’s, as they describe it, “fucked-up” invasion of Ukraine.
As it turns out, Loktev has been anything but inactive over the past several years. She started filming the independent Russian journalists of TV Rain in fall 2021, four months before Russia waged war. They speak out against Putin’s administration and warn of a coming conflict. Incrementally, each one is deemed a “foreign agent,” a status given by the state with new names announced every Friday night. As foreign agents, they must caveat everything they share online (even personal Instagram posts), say on TV, and do in public with a lengthy state-sanctioned paragraph announcing their foreign agent label, a status once only reserved for NGOs (non-governmental organizations).
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.
Drugs are planted on them and they’re brought in by the state as illegal spies. This is how it happens. In the case of Memorial, a leading human-rights organization in Russia, the government staged an attack by thugs during a company-wide meeting, to which the police responded promptly. They immediately let the thugs go, locking all Memorial members in the theater they met in and telling them no one could leave until the cops confiscated everyone’s phones and laptops for “investigation” into the thugs’ attack. This is how it happens.
One of the journalists refers to this pre-invasion Russia as Mordor. But she has no idea what’s to come. None of them do. In fact, one of the most startling elements of My Undesirable Friends is the shockwave over everyone when the invasion actually begins. “Somehow, I didn’t think this would happen… honestly,” one of the journalists’ mothers says as her daughter packs to flee the country to avoid being indefinitely jailed.
Suddenly, no one can think straight. No one knows what to do anymore. After Putin’s horrific “history” speech on February 21, in which he rejected Ukraine’s independence and acted as if the country was flooded with neo-Nazis that needed defeating, Anna baked a baguette out of rage. “I had to do something with this energy and you have this ball of dough that you can just beat the fuck out of.”
The sentiment of disbelief is shared by most, regardless of age or involvement. Despite all talk of an invasion that’s been going on for a decade, the reality of suddenly waking up in a true fascist state is clearly something no one can prepare for. If anyone could, it would be the TV Rain journalists. In a totalitarian regime, their options are sparse: emigrate (if you can) or face criminal prosecution in a Putin-bent court. The world saw how that turned out for Alexei Navalny.
The five chapters of the film cover, respectively: October 2021, November 2021, December 2021, February 22-26 of 2022, and Feb 27-March 2 of 2022, by which time all of our main characters have fled the country they fought to stifle, forced out only a week into the invasion. That’s how quickly things changed. By the time we get to the fourth chapter, everything is turned on its head. Seemingly overnight, tanks, munitions, artillery, and foot soldiers have gathered along the Ukrainian border, claiming they’re only there for “training.”
One of the journalists named Sonya arrives at the scene in the Bryansk region on a train mere days before the invasion, neither reporter nor civilian aware of Putin’s imminent recognition of the self-proclaimed republic of Donbass. But the young soldiers flooding the train they’re on, and the inexplicable military presence on the streets of Klintsy communicate that “something extraordinary” is happening. Sonya talks to foot soldiers, who unconvincingly claim she knows more than they do before they accidentally reveal the date of the incoming attack, a bumbling goon scene straight out of fiction.
They act as if they have no choice but to invade, yet when she brings up men fighting on the other side, they belligerently cut her off, referring to said men as cowards “just weaned off their mothers’ breasts,” only capable of hope because they haven’t met the crushing blow of reality in which violence rules––a bizarre, deeply uneducated, truly propagandized perspective. (It’s one similarly held by the abominable Russians at War documentary that premiered at Venice this year, which made Russian soldiers out to be pawns opposed to active participants––believers in the cause that it’s easier to play dumb about than recognize for what it is.)
“My God… this is fascism,” one exclaims when they receive the message day-of-invasion from Putin’s administration that anyone reporting on the “special military operation” must use state-sourced info. In other words, only propaganda will be legal from this point forward. “Today I have no doubt we have to leave, while we still can,” she says. “What am I going to show my kids? That I posted fucking Instagram stories? No. No, no, no,” says the other, as she plans her protest that night, much to her colleague’s disapproval. She believes staying safe in able to continue reporting should be the priority.
Protests lead to mass arrests, and in the time spent waiting for friends to be released outside the jail, journalists and friends talk at length about what Instagram is serving them in the midst of all this: cute puppies, Harry Potter, pro-war propaganda, misogynist quotes from Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride. Nervous laughter abounds, embedded with a true delirious horror. They wait and wait, told to wait even more for the person in charge because no one makes decisions at the jail. In response, one guy acutely remarks that Russia’s real religion is the ancient Phoenician cult of Baal: “There is some divine boss that no one has ever seen.”
At some point Ukrainian friends start hating them, despite their dogged fight against the war and deep connections to Ukraine (some journalists’ parents are from and still live there). But they can’t blame the Ukrainian outrage, knowing their friends are trapped in bunkers where babies are being born because of the occupation of local maternity wards.
“Both Nike and iPhone? We have no country!” The abandonment of Russia by McDonald’s, Nike, Apple, FedEx, and more global powerhouse brands causes the greatest stir––signs of the rest of the world condemning Russia’s invasion. In one sense it’s an encouragement to those we’ve been following, a much-needed sign of sanity; yet it’s the most-marked representation of the country’s avalanching collapse.
Loktev seems to be everywhere at once. She risks her life with the camera as journalists do with their pens, programs, and presence, holding on as long as they can in the week after the war begins. Yet, in the final two chapters, they scramble to piece together escape plans. Russia is banned from the Council of Europe and soon to be disconnected from the SWIFT banking system. But the civilians escaping Russia have already withdrawn all their cash in the ATMs, and their cards won’t work outside the country. Is their money even real anymore?
As Russia advances its full-scale war, deeming undesirable organizations like the international LGBTQ movement “extremists” and “terrorists,” TV Rain is inevitably shut down (they now operate out of Amsterdam). We witness the journalists, in tears, trying to muster the strength to leave––saying goodbye to their parents as they load up their dogs and few belongings for long, treacherous drives to neutral borders they can’t be sure they’ll be allowed to cross. As hard as it is to leave the country, it’s arguably harder for them to leave each other, the Rain crew a bonded family that can’t imagine having to start over in different countries without each other. Alas, they must.
“Part II: Exile coming soon” the final frame reads like a cliffhanger. What will become of our beloved defenders of freedom?
My Undesirable Friends: Part I – The Last Air in Moscow premiered at the 62nd New York Film Festival.
The post NYFF Review: Julia Loktev’s My Undesirable Friends: Part I – The Last Air in Moscow Reveals the Real World Horrors of Anti-War Russian Journalists first appeared on The Film Stage.
