Home · Entertainment · Oct 8 archive
My Undesirable Friends: Part II Explores Exile of Russian Dissidents
Confirmed
In Short: Julia Loktev's documentary 'My Undesirable Friends: Part II — Exile' delves into the lives of TV Rain journalists who fled Russia after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
The film, which premiered at the New York Film Festival, follows the journalists as they navigate new lives in various cities around the world, including Tbilisi, Jaffa, Istanbul, Prague, Amsterdam, and New York.
Loktev's project is described as unprecedented, with each event grounded in a specific time and place for transparency.
The documentary explores the process of blacklisting and government boycotts that deny young people the right to be societal participants if they do not support Putin's propaganda.
The film is divided into five sections, making it more digestible for streaming platforms, but viewers are likely to be riveted by the 'vibe movie' quality of the journalism epic.
TV Rain journalists continue their work through podcasts and YouTube channels, maintaining their journalism despite the challenges of exile.
Loktev's first part of the series, 'My Undesirable Friends,' documented the collapse of Russia's last remaining independent news channel in real time.
The second part begins just two days after the first ended, highlighting the rapid changes in the journalists' lives.
What's confirmed
- The film, which premiered at the New York Film Festival, follows the journalists as they navigate new lives in various cities around the world, including Tbilisi, Jaffa, Istanbul, Prague, Amsterdam, and New York.
- Loktev's project is described as unprecedented, with each event grounded in a specific time and place for transparency.
- The documentary explores the process of blacklisting and government boycotts that deny young people the right to be societal participants if they do not support Putin's propaganda.
- The film is divided into five sections, making it more digestible for streaming platforms, but viewers are likely to be riveted by the 'vibe movie' quality of the journalism epic.
- TV Rain journalists continue their work through podcasts and YouTube channels, maintaining their journalism despite the challenges of exile.
- Loktev's first part of the series, 'My Undesirable Friends,' documented the collapse of Russia's last remaining independent news channel in real time.
- The second part begins just two days after the first ended, highlighting the rapid changes in the journalists' lives.
What's still developing
- The word ‘unprecedented’ can be thrown around liberally when discussing cinema, but there had genuinely never been anything quite like the My Undesirable Friends project.
- Even trivial aspects of adolescent relationships are made profound because of the context that they are in; one woman notes that “sometimes you need someone to distract you”.
- It’s an important concession on Loktev’s part, as she makes a point of grounding the specific time and place in which every event is recorded for the sake of transparency.
- The second part, “ My Undesirable Friends : Part II — Exile,” follows those voices of TV Rain in global freefall after fleeing their country following Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 — as they try to reconstitute and reckon with the guilt and shame they feel over leaving Russia and over Russia’s fascist-imperialist actions.
- One of the protagonists from “Part I — Last Air in Moscow,” the former TV Rain anchor Anna Nemzer, ends up in a lonely pocket of Georgia with her family after deciding against exiling to Israel, where she’s about to renew a passport.
- It’s divided across five sections that could potentially make “Exile” more digestible on a streaming platform, than as one immense slab of footage, but expect to find yourself riveted to what appears on its head to be a journalism “epic” but is really more of a vibe movie.
- You might recall the startup vibes of TV Rain in “Part I,” and that spirit remains in a film about people, often young and somehow still harnessing hope, themselves trying to start back up.
- DOCUMENTARY: When I interviewed you last year for part one’s NYFF premiere, I believe you had already shot all the footage for this second part but hadn’t dug into the editing yet.