My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow

A person in a fluffy white coat holds a smartphone to their ear, appearing serious. Behind them, surfboards lean against a white brick wall and a colorful mural of a van with tropical flowers reads “SURFING NOT ALONE.”

How do you keep fighting for the truth when your country declares you an outlaw?

Soviet-born American filmmaker Julia Loktev came to Moscow in 2021 to make a film about independent journalists being declared “foreign agents” by Putin’s regime — as it turns out, just four months before Russia started a full-scale war in Ukraine. With her friend Anna Nemzer, a talk show host at TV Rain, Russia’s last remaining independent news channel, Loktev brings us into a community of sharp, warm and funny young women speaking truth to power as they face increasing threats. Loktev filmed in Moscow during the first week of the full-scale invasion, as the journalists tried to counter Russian propaganda and report the truth on the war, until all independent media was shut down and they were forced to flee the country.

Structured in five chapters, feeling like a cross between a Russian novel and a reality show about frighteningly real reality, Loktev’s film is an extraordinary historic record of a country on the verge of fascism and an immersive and intimate inside view of the opposition in an authoritarian society, which becomes all the more globally relevant every day.

The total runtime for this film is approximately 4 hours, 25 minutes. Our Cornell Cinema screening will be presented in three blocks with two 10-minute intermissions.

Chapter 1: The Lives of Foreign Agents and Chapter 2: The Town Crazies — 2 hrs., 22 min

10 min. INTERMISSION

Chapter 3: The Holiday Special — 55 min

10 min. INTERMISSION

Chapter 4: The Expected Impossible and Chapter 5: Don't Say War — 1 hr., 5 min

Part of our "Doc Spots" series. In Russian with English subtitles. Courtesy of Argot Pictures.