On a chilly Moscow street in October 2021, Julia Loktev pressed record on her iPhone, capturing the first moments of what would become an extraordinary documentary: My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow. She didn’t know it then, but she was documenting the final months before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine—and, with it, the effective end of independent journalism in the country. As the film opens, Loktev’s calm narration warns, “The world you are about to see no longer exists.” That sense of foreboding permeates every frame, as the documentary chronicles the rapid unraveling of press freedom under Vladimir Putin’s tightening grip.
Loktev, who was born in St. Petersburg and immigrated to the United States at age nine, returned to Russia after reading about young journalists forced to declare themselves “foreign agents” for reporting critically on the government. According to The New York Times, this label—imposed by the Russian Ministry of Justice—meant journalists like Sonya Groysman, Olga Churakova, and Anna Nemzer had to register every personal expenditure with the authorities and append a disclaimer to every broadcast, article, or even Instagram post. Failing to do so could result in hefty fines or jail time. The only real offense, as The Atlantic notes, was not reporting the news as the Kremlin preferred.
Loktev’s intent was to film a documentary about the absurdity and dangers of Russia’s “foreign agent” law. But history, as it often does, had other plans. Within four months of her arrival, Russia invaded Ukraine. The escalation provided the government with a grimly convenient pretext to silence dissent, labeling any journalist who reported on the war in unapproved terms as an “internal enemy.” The consequences were swift and severe: almost all independent journalists—including those Loktev filmed—fled the country, fearing imprisonment or worse. As The New York Times observes, Loktev’s film “evolved into a shattering portrayal of an authoritarian government using misinformation, isolation and war to control its citizens.”
The documentary, which runs an ambitious 5 hours and 24 minutes, immerses viewers in the daily lives of these embattled journalists. Many, like Groysman and Churakova, were in their twenties and worked at TV Rain, Russia’s last independent news channel. The film’s intimacy is in part thanks to Loktev’s choice of equipment: she shot primarily on iPhones, which allowed her to blend into the background and capture moments that larger crews would have missed. “I was around other people shooting some of the same events at the same time I was,” Loktev told The Atlantic, “and they were like 10 feet farther back than I was, because that’s as close as they could get with their cameras.”
Yet, for all its political urgency, My Undesirable Friends is also a portrait of ordinary life under extraordinary pressure. The film’s youngest subject, 23-year-old Ksenia Mironova, is the fiancée of Ivan Safronov, a journalist jailed for treason in July 2020 and sentenced to 22 years in prison. Mironova and her friends gather for dinners, joke about TV shows, and try to maintain a sense of normalcy even as the world around them grows more dangerous. Loktev deliberately identifies her subjects by their nicknames—Anya, Ksyusha—inviting viewers into their circle. “What I like about this movie a lot is that I can see girls with their dogs or Anya just cooking, because that’s how she deals with her stress, and I understand that completely,” Mironova, now living in New York, told The Atlantic. “I think almost every person can understand.”
The film is unflinching in its depiction of the mounting dangers. As the months pass and the laws tighten, Loktev’s subjects wonder aloud whether it’s time to leave Russia. The sense of impending doom is palpable, yet life’s routines persist. Loktev recalls waiting for a subject at a café on the night Russia began bombing Ukraine, noticing that people at the next table were on a Tinder date. “Part of the authoritarian attempt is this sense when you’re living through it that life continues to look normal around you, and you feel slightly schizophrenic,” she said. “You feel like you’re going crazy—like, Is this really happening? There’s still matcha lattes everywhere.”
By the film’s end, the choice for many is heartbreaking: flee and continue their work in exile, or stay and risk prison. Mironova’s own story culminates with her departure from Russia, in tears, as anti-war protests are met with armed troops. Loktev ensured that nothing in the film would endanger her subjects—faces are blurred, some figures kept out of frame—but for Mironova, even watching her scenes proved too painful. At the film’s Berlin International Film Festival premiere, she asked staff to wait until the credits rolled before bringing her into the theater, explaining, “because the last episode ends with me crying and leaving, and I remember what comes after.”
The documentary’s American theatrical run began this week at New York’s Film Forum, with Loktev, Nemzer, and Mironova appearing on a panel. The timing could not be more poignant. On the day of the film’s U.S. premiere, National Guard troops were arriving in Washington, and CBS announced plans to appoint a “bias monitor” to oversee news coverage, following the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s late-night show—a move many saw as a concession to political pressure. As The Atlantic remarks, the parallels between Russia’s descent into authoritarianism and recent events in the U.S. are hard to ignore. Among Russian exiles, the response to Colbert’s cancellation was telling: “Welcome to Russia in the ’90s and 2000s. This is exactly what was going on in Russia 20 years ago.”
Loktev’s documentary doesn’t just chronicle the loss of press freedom in Russia; it asks urgent questions about resistance, exile, and the bonds of community. “One of the interesting things for me in the film is this question of: What do you do when you live in a country where your government is doing terrible things, and how do you continue to function as the opposition in that country?” Loktev said. “Do you put on plays? Do you continue to work as a journalist? Do you continue to work as an activist for people with disabilities, for homeless people, people with HIV? Or are you supposed to leave that country and leave it to the dictator?”
Despite the darkness, there are moments of light. Mironova, reflecting on her ordeal, told The Atlantic, “I saw a lot of light in my colleagues. And I had people around me who fought a lot for our future, even if we lost. Part of my life is still awful. But I had this chance to experience real love, and how people can support each other, and how kind they can be in a very, very dark time.”
As the lines between distant authoritarianism and local reality blur, My Undesirable Friends serves as both a warning and a testament to resilience. The world it depicts may no longer exist, but its lessons feel more urgent than ever.
