Ukraine Invasion Reshaped ‘My Undesirable Friends’ — SkimNews
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- Julia Loktev said the two-part documentary “My Undesirable Friends” took shape during the week Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, after she had already begun filming.
- My Undesirable Friends follows journalists at TV Rain, described as Russia’s last independent news channel before its shutdown over coverage of the war in Ukraine.
- The Lives of Foreign Agents was Loktev’s planned title for a film about young journalists labeled foreign agents and media branded undesirable organizations.
- TV Rain journalists were forced to leave Russia and scatter across Europe, requiring Loktev to expand the documentary’s scale; Part II begins immediately after their departure.
- Russia shut down all independent media within the first week of the full-scale war, four and a half months after the foreign-agent designations Loktev described.
- Putin called the departing journalists “flies that Russia spits out of its mouth,” a characterization Loktev quoted as she described their forced exile.
- Russia had hosted the World Cup during a year when the war in Ukraine had already lasted eight years, a contrast Loktev invokes to explain why the invasion was unthinkable.
Why it matters: For TV Rain’s journalists, fearing police visits and friends’ arrests became forced exile, eliminating their ability to keep reporting from Russia, as Loktev describes it. Four and a half months after the “foreign agent” designations, the invasion and media shutdown also forced her film to expand from constrained reporting at home to displacement across Europe.
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