My Undesirable Friends: Part II – Exile. 2026. USA. Directed by Julia Loktev. DCP. In Russian; English subtitles. 355 min.
Julia Loktev has long been drawn to the decisive moment, whether the wake of a devastating car accident in Moment of Impact, a fateful backpacking trip in The Loneliest Planet, or the climactic 48 hours in the life of a suicide bomber in Day Night Day Night. Never has this preoccupation been more consequential than in her monumental new documentary My Undesirable Friends, in which the Soviet-born, New York–based filmmaker chronicles the independent Russian journalists who for the past six years have risked their lives to expose Vladimir Putin’s war crimes in Ukraine and human rights abuses and crony capitalism back home. In this, the second part of her investigation, Loktev finds these journalists, having been branded as “foreign agents” and forced into exile, no less fiercely committed to the cause of a free and democratic press, even as Russia sinks further into kleptocracy, totalitarianism, and imperialistic delusion. This film will be presented with a 30-minute intermission.
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