My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow

Four months before Russia starts a full-scale war in Ukraine, US filmmaker Julia Loktev, who was born in the Soviet Union, travels to Moscow to make a documentary about young female journalists being labeled by Putin’s regime as “foreign agents.” They work for media organizations including TV Rain, Russia’s last remaining independent television channel, under draconian restrictions and the constant threat of imprisonment—at any moment, the government could silence them with a fabricated charge. Several of their peers have already been murdered.

Loktev drops us directly into the lives of these impassioned women. The close-knit group regularly gathers around the kitchen table to discuss the mounting repression as both the risks and the urgency of their work continue to grow. The filmmaker provides a close-up view of how authoritarianism works, how quickly it becomes dangerous, meanwhile as seemingly normal life continues all around.

“The world you’re about to see no longer exists,” she warns in her ominous opening line. This first part ends shortly after Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, when everyone featured in the film is forced to flee the country.