Russian President Vladimir Putin has a habit of driving people out of his country. You know – free-minded people, the kind who believe in democratic values and independent thinking.
That dynamic became apparent in the Oscar-winning documentary Mr. Nobody Against Putin, about a beloved grade school educator in Russia’s east, exiled for defying Kremlin orders to implement a propagandistic curriculum after the country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. A similar fate befalls the protagonists of the Oscar-shortlisted documentary My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow, directed by Julia Loktev. The film, premiering exclusively on the Mubi platform this Friday, follows journalists – most of them young women – who found themselves essentially branded as enemies of the state for daring to report news from an independent perspective.
Loktev joins the latest episode of Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast to discuss her mega-project and its upcoming sequel (Part 1 alone runs nearly 5½ hours). The filmmaker, who was born in the then-Soviet Union and came to the U.S. as a pre-teen, tells us she began filming in Moscow in 2021, when few inside or outside the country suspected Russia soon would launch a brutal attack on its neighbor. Already at that point, journalists like TV Rain anchor Anna Nemzer were coming under increasing scrutiny from the government, which forced them to publicly and repeatedly declare themselves “agents of a foreign government.” Loktev describes how that stigmatization was part of a Kremlin effort to discredit any reporters who strayed outside the party line.
Loktev also explores one of the reasons the story has captivated so many – that viewers see themselves in the documentary participants. She describes her protagonists “hate-watching” Emily in Paris, for instance, and shopping at Zara and H&M – the sort of things that make them readily identifiable to a Western audience. The only difference: These young women had to hurriedly chuck their belongings into suitcases and flee before federal agents came for their arrest.
Loktev also gives us a preview of My Undesirable Friends: Part 2, which promises to be a strong awards contender when it comes out later in the year.
That’s on the new episode of Doc Talk hosted by Oscar winner John Ridley (12 Years a Slave, Shirley), and Matt Carey, Deadline’s senior documentary editor. The pod is a production of Deadline and Ridley’s Nō Studios.
Listen to the episode above or on major podcast platforms including Spotify, iHeart and Apple.