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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. “My Undesirable Friends: Part II – Exile” follows their stories amidst this exodus, a globetrotting journey that proves harrowing in unexpected ways over an engrossing five chapters, spanning 355 minutes.
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.
“Exile” begins with a brisk, five-minute recap of events, which goes a long way toward reintroducing Loktev’s subjects. 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. As their challenges mount, sometimes all they can do is laugh at the absurdity, though at least they’re laughing together. However, enough time is spent with them as individuals that their bleak loneliness starts to bleed through the screen. Twentysomething Ksenia Mironova finds ways to move forward in her career, though her fiancé remains a state prisoner. The older Anna Nemzer (the film’s co-director) grows more frayed, as each emigration means having to uproot her adolescent daughter. TV RAIN anchors like Valeria Ratnikova face both scrutiny and legal threats, while for those still reporting from (or escaping) Ukrainian war zones, the dangers are more pressing. Even as they move between borders, bullseyes remain painted on their backs — though they each maintain that the people whose stories they tell have it infinitely worse.
One has to wonder if Loktev feels the same about her subjects. A one-woman team who remains mostly unseen, she finds herself hopping between cities for years on end, similarly sacrificing peace of mind to bring vital narratives to light. Whether or not she could have hired an additional crew or second unit, the effect of her solo flight is an emotional proximity to her subjects, who trust her enough to let their guard down in front of her smartphone. Her camera app seems to run day and night, but she and Taylor make judicious selections. While Part I felt more straightforward in its unfurling, Part II appears to condense time even more deftly, jump-cutting within and between exchanges without ever losing momentum or conversational clarity.
Loktev and her undesirable friends ought not to be boxed in — their work is too expansive and important. But there’s also a noticeably feminine intimacy to several scenes here, whether the subjects discuss clothing as they wrap up their lives yet again, or present themselves casually, freely and without artifice, as though the camera were merely recording for a private Instagram, or absent altogether. The film is born from journalistic ideology, but most of its subjects are women, and it takes aesthetic shape through the lens of female friendship and professional community, fanning outward from this personal place until it shades the political with remarkably familiar hues.
As the sands shift beneath their feet, the subjects are practically the only constant in each other’s lives — as is Loktev, who’s there to capture them at their best and worst. Rare are the films that remain so transfixed by the conundrums inherent to living in a murky world, or that pursue the emotional and psychological dimensions of political journalism with such disarming simplicity. Let it be a warning of things to come, or a comfort once they inevitably do. There’s no untangling the two anymore. Not for people who’ve dedicated their lives to sounding the alarm, even as they wonder if they might be too late.
English (US) ·