“Sadism disguised with the lacework of words” is how Anna Nemzer, a talk show journalist with TV Rain, Russia’s last independent news channel, describes Putin’s twisting of phrases in “My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow.” And “being at the right place at the right time — or the wrong place at the wrong time,” is how “The Loneliest Planet” director Julia Loktev has described the circumstances that led to the documentary she’s made about Nemzer’s work. First conceived as a look at the daily lives of reporters who’ve been branded “foreign agents” by their own government, the essence of the project — now a five-part, five-and-a-half-hour epic — was profoundly transformed four months into production, when Russia launched a full-scale invasion against Ukraine.
Some filmmakers may have seen that as their cue to leave, especially as the FSB began to close in on their ragtag cast of charismatic idealists, but Loktev immediately recognized how the war would make TV Rain’s work even more vital than it already was; ditto the work she was doing to document it. With “My Undesirable Friends,” that work has taken the form of an addictive thriller that gets to know its subjects with the fly-on-the-wall intimacy of a reality TV show. With Loktev’s off-camera presence serving as a constant portal for the viewer, we’re invited into the apartments of these eager truth-tellers as they eat (and eat and eat), drink, and steal a healthy amount of gallows humor from the horrors of their situation. We learn about their Harry Potter obsessions, and the names of their dogs. Most of all, we watch as they try to figure out how late is too late to get out.
And while five-plus hours of mostly hanging out in strangers’ apartments might seem like an increasingly tedious invitation, Loktev ends up justifying the running time as her “undesirable friends” soon become ours as well. Smartly structured so that different “foreign agents” take centerstage from episode to episode, we’re forever kept on our toes (right through to a finale that hints at a part two, currently in the works).
Standout characters include the likes of Sonya Groysman and Olya Churakova, who co-host a TV Rain podcast called “Hi, You’re a Foreign Agent,” the title of which refers to the fact that Groysman and Churakova are required to disclose that they’ve been labeled as such at the start of each episode. A woman named Kyusha greets us at the door of her flat with “Tea, coffee, hot chocolate?” before going on to describe the harrowing raid that occurred there earlier, a horrifying intrusion made darkly comical when the government foot-soldiers handed her lawyer a witness subpoena that disqualified him from working on the case. (Unsurprisingly, “foreign agent” lawyers are the only ones repping “foreign agents” in Putin’s Russia these days.)
And while Anya is torn between “trying not to panic” and “trying not to get used to the situation,” a guest on her channel — a woman from No to Violence, an NGO aiding victims of domestic abuse — says she finds strength in “no longer having illusions” about life after the invasion. As the war intensifies and the crackdowns escalate and brave souls take to the streets, Olya begins to wonder if speaking truth to power is truly enough. Explaining her decision to join the protests and risk arrest, she cries in exasperation: “What will I show my future children — Insta Stories?”
Lamenting the Russian populace’s decades of collective denial, a young female journo observes that “For 20 years we fed the monster with our silence and passivity.” That sentiment could be applied to the global community as well, a point the journalist argues by noting that Putin’s annexation of Crimea didn’t prevent Russia from hosting the 2018 World Cup. After reading an alert on her phone advising all US citizens to leave Russia immediately (to which an offscreen Loktev exclaims “That’s me!”), another of Anna’s colleagues says “We’re locked up with a madman who has nuclear weapons.”
And the TV Rain newscasts only get ever more absurd as the war rages on. One of the channel’s anchors interviews a distraught Ukrainian guest who describes the utter devastation to civilian infrastructure he’s witnessing… to which the anchor responds with the required lie that according to the Russian government no such destruction has occurred. (Clearly sympathetic, she practically begs the guy to stop urging their Russian viewership to take action against the regime.) Later she reports the breaking news that one of their own journalists has just been detained while trying to place flowers at a memorial for assassinated Putin critic Boris Nemtsov.
What begins as Loktev’s attempt to understand what it’s like to be forced to mark oneself as “other” — right down to disclosing foreign agent status alongside wedding pictures in social media posts — gradually turns into an accidental journey into the process of decision-making at the end of the world, its characters confronted with a series of excruciating questions that harken back to both Stalin and the Holocaust. Is it better to stay and work and risk one’s own freedom than to try to fight for the right to live in a free society from abroad (with no guarantee for your safety wherever you may roam)? What if, like Alesya, who scrambles to get her pup vaccinated for travel, you have a girlfriend who doesn’t have a visa? Or what if, like Kyusha, your journalist fiancé is in prison? Do you leave him behind? And how does one just pick up and move to an unknown land anyway, knowing you may never see your country or loved ones again? The answers are personal and individual, and never right or wrong; and require the sort of deep thinking the current regime has been attempting to conquer drip by drip for a very long time.
Grade: A-
“My Undesirable Friends: Part 1 — Last Air in Moscow” premiered at the 2024 New York Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
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