Julia Loktev continues to wield her iPhone like a personal diary while following journalists targeted by the Kremlin. Following her mammoth five-hour odyssey “My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow,” Julia Loktev’s sequel remains just as riveting, if not more so, in its continued depiction of journalists escaping the Russian government. Its predecessor’s endpoint (one Loktev could not have foreseen when she began shooting on her iPhone X) was the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and the overnight escape of her close friends from Moscow after they were branded foreign agents for reporting on war crimes.
That figure might seem imposing to the uninitiated, but Loktev and co-editor Michael Taylor have, once again, crafted a conversational epic that imbues each twist and turn with enormous stakes. It’s hard not to get invested in the lives of Part I’s subjects and Part II’s newcomers alike. Speaking truth to power with the online tools at their disposal, this murderer’s row consists of lively, awkward, driven, beautiful, lovestruck and above-all complicated people, all caught in impossible personal and professional deadlocks and weighed down by immigrant uncertainty.
It also imbues the film with immediate tension. With only small suitcases and the clothes on their backs, the young journalists of independent outfits like TV RAIN find themselves suddenly scattered across cities like Warsaw, Istanbul, Prague and Tel Aviv. They go anywhere that will grant them temporary refuge, even as they wrestle with their own ethics in relation to each new nation’s politics, when compared and contrasted with their homeland.
This sets the stage for a film in which firmly held beliefs are placed under microscopes — by the subjects themselves, and by critics on either side of the Ukraine/Russia divide. As some reporters begin broadcasting from Latvia, a sense of temporariness pervades each interaction, no matter how casual. Authors, reporters and podcasters alike are forced to consider the impact of their words, and their own potential complicity in their country’s actions, as stepping even a toe out of line might result in further expulsion.
When speaking truth to power, nothing is a given. Unlike the mere six months covered by the first film, the sequel spans several years and covers major events, from continuing Russian aggression to the killing of opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Loktev’s scattered cast ends up experiencing these global shockwaves firsthand, reporting on everything from political poisonings to mass civilian graves — in person if they can, or remotely, with the help of anonymous sources.
Some move or return to Kyiv. Others make their way further west, like to the United States, where they observe an uncanny authoritarianism taking hold. The film’s chilling tapestry is interwoven with its subjects’ gallows humor.
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