If there’s been one bright spot this January, it’s watching people bond over “Heated Rivalry,” the sweet, very Canadian show about a Russian hockey player finding love with his archrival. Nonetheless, this week I’m going to recommend a different story involving Russia and repression. A darker, true one.
At five hours plus, Julia Loktev’s My Undesirable Friends: Part 1 — Last Air in Moscow could be one of the longest documentaries you’ll see. It’s worth it, as the film’s many awards attest. The Vermont International Film Foundation screens the film in two halves this week at Main Street Landing Performing Arts Center in Burlington: See Section 1 on Friday, January 23, at 7 p.m., or Saturday, January 24, at 3 p.m.; and Section 2 on Saturday, January 24, at 7 p.m., or Sunday, January 25, at 3 p.m.
The deal
Known for her narrative films (Day Night Day Night, The Loneliest Planet), director Loktev emigrated from the Soviet Union to the U.S. as a child. On a visit back to Russia in fall 2021, she set out to profile independent journalists — mostly young women — whom President Vladimir Putin’s government had recently classified as “foreign agents.”
This Kafkaesque label had real consequences for people such as Anna Nemzer, host of talk shows on Russia’s last surviving independent news channel, TV Rain. Not only are “foreign agents” required to report their quarterly personal expenses to the government, but they also have to emblazon every public statement they make — even Instagram posts — with an all-caps disclaimer describing it as “disseminated by a foreign source of mass media.”
Loktev’s subjects didn’t take this lying down. In rambling, candid interviews — many conducted at parties or in bustling newsrooms and studios — they deride the hated disclaimer as “the fuckery.” They speak eloquently of their anger at seeing the rights of queer people, migrants and other minorities disappear. They post podcasts and videos that mock and fact-check the official narratives. They discuss agonizing over every knock on the door and over choosing the right underwear (presentable but not sexy) in case they’re detained. One of them mails packages to her fiancé, imprisoned for “treason.”
Celebrating New Year’s Eve, TV Rain’s staff expresses tearful hopes for 2022. Less than two months later, Russia invades and bombs Ukraine. “When I started making the film,” Loktev writes in press notes, “I had no idea I would be capturing history.”
Will you like it?
Preparing to shoot My Undesirable Friends, Loktev writes, she hired a cinematographer. But she quickly learned her friends were more comfortable with just her and her iPhone.
The result is less like watching a traditional documentary than like tagging along with a tireless, well-connected person who’s eager to attend every one of her friends’ parties, protests and impromptu hangouts. While many long docs induce torpor, this one has our eyes and brains racing to keep up with the subtitles.
The 3.5-hour Section 1 somehow still moves at a breakneck pace, propelled by the energy and outrage of its young subjects. Many of them don’t remember a world without Putin or Harry Potter, and the latter gives them a framework for understanding the former. They talk and talk but rarely straight to the camera, unveiling their histories and worldviews as they cook, drive, eat, scroll or edit video.
When Russia invades Ukraine, early in Section 2, the journalists’ mood veers sharply into shock and despair. Some take to the streets and are arrested. Others pack their bags and secure visas for themselves and their pets. They mount vigils outside the police precinct and text their Ukrainian friends. Between frantic bouts of work, many express shame and a profound sense of loss: Is this still their country? How could they have let this happen?
We already know how this will end, because Loktev has told us early on. My Undesirable Friends documents the last days of a thriving media scene, which in turn documented the last days of a Russia where free speech meant something.
And here’s the most chilling part: None of this feels foreign. The Moscow of My Undesirable Friends isn’t some gray Soviet throwback or Orwellian dystopia; it’s all bustling cafés, cheeky T-shirts and young women admitting shamefacedly that they’ve been binging “Emily in Paris.” It’s people calling the regime “Mordor,” rage baking, drinking too much and laughing hysterically so they won’t cry. Foreigners on social media ask why they don’t just do something. They don’t know what to say.
As Nemzer says in one memorable broadcast, the last recourse we have against tyranny is keeping a record of its crimes. My Undesirable Friends is an indelible record of what 21st-century autocracy and resistance look like. I think most stateside viewers will also recognize it as a warning.
If you like this, try…
Navalny (2022; HBO Max, YouTube Primetime, rentable): The attempted assassination of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, the subject of this Oscar-winning documentary, is an essential part of the backdrop of My Undesirable Friends
Antidote (2024; PBS): James Jones’ “Frontline” documentary tells the stories of three whistleblowers who risked their lives to oppose the Putin regime.
A Thousand Cuts (2020; Kanopy, PBS, rentable): This past Vermont International Film Festival selection profiles Maria Ressa, a Filipina journalist who faced harassment and jail time for her tireless efforts to hold then-president Rodrigo Duterte accountable.
This article appears in January 21 • 2026.
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