‘My Undesirable Friends: Part I - Last Air In Moscow’ review: A gripping portrait of Moscow under Putin

Dir: Julia Loktev. US. 2024. 324mins 

The reality of living inside Putin’s Russia is vividly detailed in My Undesirable Friends: Part I - Last Air In Moscow, an absorbing documentary that runs more than five hours, chronicling several independent journalists in the months immediately before and after the country’s invasion of Ukraine. Director Julia Loktev, who previously made the narrative features Day Night Day Night and The Loneliest Planet, has crafted a grand tapestry out of strikingly intimate moments, capturing the stubborn optimism of this group, even as they fear for their lives as the government imprisons its enemies and stifles free speech. 

A riveting journalism thriller that never loses sight of the human cost of authoritarianism

Premiering at the New York Film Festival in 2024 before screening in Berlin the following year, Last Air In Moscow has been acquired by Mubi, which should help the lengthy picture find a discerning arthouse audience. A slot on the 2025 Academy Award documentary shortlist will further boost a film that contains uncomfortable resonance for viewers outside Russia who notice their own countries slipping into authoritarianism. 

In the autumn of 2021, Loktev travelled to Russia to explore making a picture about young journalists who had been branded ’foreign agents’ by the government because their reporting challenged the Kremlin’s propaganda. As she got to know these reporters and podcasters, she was introduced to a wider array of journalists — many of them working for TV Rain, the country’s last independent news channel — and began filming them at work and in their homes. Then, in early 2022, Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, intensifying his already brutal clampdown on the free press and endangering everyone Loktev had been interviewing. 

Armed with only an iPhone, the filmmaker (who also serves as cinematographer, producer and co-editor) lets this story unfold gradually, giving the viewer enough time to get to know her many subjects. Split into five chapters, Last Air In Moscow introduces us to the scrappy reporters Sonya Groysman and Olga Churakova, who defiantly launched a podcast called ’Hi, You’re A Foreign Agent’ once the government labelled them as such. The reflective Anna Nemzer, credited as Last Air In Moscow’s co-director, is a host on TV Rain and, unlike many of her younger onscreen cohorts, is in her 40s and married with a family. TV Rain reporter Ksenia Mironova struggles to keep her spirits up despite her fiancé, journalist Ivan Safronov, being arrested by the government in 2020 on treason charges. Indeed, dread hangs heavy over every scene as Loktev’s subjects cope with their growing anxiety about possibly being detained for doing their jobs. 

But then the unimaginable happens: Russia invades Ukraine in early 2022. Last Air In Moscow’s principal figures document the war – respected long-form journalist Elena Kostyuchenko travels to Ukraine to report first-hand – and TV Rain does its best to interview government officials, who lie about the war’s progress and its purposes. All the while, journalists branded as “foreign agents” must begin their broadcasts with a disclaimer stating their status, a rule that is both chilling and darkly comic, especially for the journalists, who view Putin and his minions with contempt. 

Last Air In Moscow is a riveting journalism thriller that never loses sight of the human cost of authoritarianism. Loktev views these individuals as heroes fighting to save their country from leaders bent on crushing its spirit. (As one of her subjects notes bitterly, for all of Putin’s supposed patriotic fervour, she loves Russia far more than he does.) The film’s portrait of activism in the face of grave threats harkens back to earlier pictures, such as All The President’s Men, which also spoke truth to power, but the consequences for those at TV Rain could not be more frightening. And because Loktev invests hours of screen time in these people, when the government crackdown hits close to home, the outcome is suitably gripping and emotional. 

International audiences might be tempted to watch the documentary in search of clues as to how to prevent authoritarianism elsewhere, but Last Air In Moscow’s sobering takeaway is that such political waves - powerful and unceasing - are supremely difficult to combat. In quiet conversations and candid moments, Loktev’s subjects grieve for their country while wondering what more they could have done - or if ringing alarm bells earlier would have made any difference. (Nemzer perhaps sums up the film’s despair best when she simply says, “I don’t have a country anymore.”) Protest movements consist of people, and Last Air In Moscow shows us the faces of conscientious journalists who wanted to tell the truth about what was happening inside their beloved homeland. That their noble mission ultimately proved futile was certainly not for lack of trying.