Loktev's Six-Hour Doc Tracks Russian Exile Journalists — SkimNews
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- Julia Loktev's six-hour documentary "My Undesirable Friends: Part II — Exile" opens in theaters October 9, following the staff of Russia's last independent news channel after they fled following Putin's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
- TV Rain journalists were labeled "foreign agents" by the Kremlin before the war; the film tracks the mostly-women network as they continue reporting from Tbilisi, Jaffa, Istanbul, Prague, Amsterdam, and New York via YouTube and podcasts.
- Elena Kostyuchenko, an out-queer Russian journalist now in Berlin, recounts in the film falling suddenly ill while traveling through Germany for a Ukrainian visa, suspecting she was poisoned by the Kremlin.
- Anna Nemzer, the films' "moral compass" and former TV Rain anchor, is shown in a remote part of Georgia with her family after deciding against relocating to Israel, where she was set to renew a passport.
- Peter Ruzavin and Nataliya Gumenyuk's geographically divided marriage — Ruzavin in Vienna, Gumenyuk still working in Ukraine — plays out largely over Zoom calls, which the review calls "a profound microcosm" of how the war restructures relationships.
- TV Rain attempted to rebuild in Latvia before host Alexey Korostelev was fired over a linguistic gaffe that made it sound as if the outlet was assisting Russian soldiers on the front line; the channel then relocated to Amsterdam.
- Loktev, an American citizen born in the Soviet Union, served as the film's only crew member, shooting iPhone footage herself over a long production and editing the six hours with Michael Taylor.
Why it matters: The film offers sustained, intimate access to a network of Russian journalists criminalized at home and scattered across at least six cities — a rare on-the-ground portrait of dissident exile that doubles as a study of how the war reshapes personal bonds, from Zoom-call marriages to the suspected poisoning of a reporter abroad. For viewers, it's a concrete theatrical release date (October 9) for a six-hour work that the reviewer calls a landmark documentary achievement.
Ask SkimNews
