Loktev's Six-Hour Doc Tracks Russian TV Rain in Exile — SkimNews
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- "My Undesirable Friends: Part II — Exile" is a six-hour documentary by Julia Loktev opening in theaters Friday, October 9, following Russian TV Rain journalists displaced after Putin's 2022 invasion of Ukraine
- The TV Rain collective, a mostly female staff labeled "foreign agents" by the Kremlin, is now scattered across Tbilisi, Jaffa, Istanbul, Prague, Amsterdam, New York, Berlin, Vienna, and Georgia while continuing to publish via YouTube channels and podcasts
- Anna Nemzer, a former TV Rain anchor, settled in a "lonely pocket of Georgia" with her family after deciding against relocating to Israel, and serves as the films' "moral compass" across both Parts I and II
- Elena Kostyuchenko, an out-queer journalist now based in Berlin, recounts falling suddenly ill while traveling through Germany to acquire a Ukrainian visa and suspecting she was poisoned by the Kremlin
- Peter Ruzavin and Nataliya Gumenyuk, a Russian-Ukrainian married journalist pair, conduct their relationship over Zoom calls — he operates from Vienna while she remains in Ukraine, a dynamic the review calls "a profound microcosm" of the war's toll
- 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; the operation then relocated to Amsterdam and now lives on as a YouTube channel
- Loktev, an American citizen born in the Soviet Union, served as a one-woman crew shooting on iPhone, and co-edited the film with Michael Taylor over a lengthy production period
Why it matters: Multiple TV Rain journalists featured now face criminal cases for their reporting from Ukraine, meaning this film doubles as a record of voices that Russia's state apparatus is actively trying to silence. Loktev's status as an American citizen born in the Soviet Union lets her operate with a freedom the protagonists cannot — and her decision to film solo on an iPhone produces access to backseat confessions, hospital beds, and Zoom calls that a traditional crew could not have captured. The October 9 theatrical release gives English-speaking audiences one of the most intimate documentations yet of the human cost of Russia's media crackdown.
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