My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow
(2024 | USA | 324 minutes | Julia Loktev)

Over five chillingly prophetic episodes (running five and a half hours), Julia Loktev follows a group of young journalists in a Russia that no longer exists. Captured in the months before the start of Putin’s full-scale war (special military operation) against Ukraine, most of the women captured in verité fashion at home, among friends, and tirelessly working at alternative news organization TV Rain have been deemed “foreign agents” by the Ministry of Justice. Any on-air reporting requires this disclosure, and stories are preceded by an incantation that outside influences and enemies of the state were involved in the production of the dwindling supply of accurate reporting coming out of Moscow. The stories that they profile are, of course, an important counterbalance to the tidal waves of propaganda.

But more moving are the glimpses into the increasingly anxious rhythms of everyday life under an increasingly absurd and oppressive regime. In their own ways, they each refract the growing unease as the drumbeat toward war grows steadily louder and reflect on how maddening it is to be aware of the growing cracks in normalcy that much of society is able to compartmentalize or ignore. Over dinner parties, closely huddled in taxis, or during tireless hours at work, the sense of looming dread becomes realized. How much worse can it get? Will the inevitable arrive? Should they stay or will they go? Where can each person do the most good? Characters disappear from episode to episode based on their own personal situations, ability to travel, or ties that bind them to a city and country that they love, but that no longer loves them back. The uncomfortable familiarity and growing applicability of these kinds of questions years later and thousands of miles away make for uncomfortable, but it is impossible to look away.

324 minutes seems like too much, but it’s barely enough. For better or worse, a Part II — Exile is in the works.

The Secret Agent
(2025 | Brazil | 158 minutes | Kleber Mendonça Filho)

Whereas the young journalists of My Undesirable Friends are experiencing the crushing fist of an ever more repressive regime closing round Moscow, the ragtag bunch of Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent are decades into the turmoil of the authoritarian regime of Brazil’s military dictatorship. Our entry to a close-knit community of political refugees comes by way of Armando, a dashingly handsome teacher played by Wagner Moura as he rolls into Recife on the cusp of Carnival season in a shiny schoolbus-yellow Volkswagen Beetle. A darkly absurd interaction at a gas station where a murdered corpse has been left unattended for days communicates the casual corruption of a law enforcement whose officers are more efficient at casual extortion than maintaining civil order. 

When he reaches the city, he’s welcomed into a vibrant enclave of refugees of different stripes, presided over by a world-wise older woman and her uncanny two-faced cat. While in town, Armando reconnects with his young son (freshly obsessed with the age-inappropriate Jaws), hoping to reclaim fatherhood duties from the in-laws who have been raising him since his wife’s death. He also uses his undercover work at a municipal office to attempt to uncover information about his own mother, whose past remains unknown to him. I could not say exactly what activity put him in the political crosshairs or jeopardized his position in society, which, I suppose, is the point of the depiction of life under authoritarianism. The reasons aren’t important and probably aren’t real. 

Instead, Mendonça Filho allows the film to meander through late-1970s Brazilian underground society. Inept hitmen and horny projectionists. A mismanaged dismemberment spurring a string of unrelated attacks by way of a tiger shark autopsy. Udo Kier appears in his final film role as a misunderstood German refugee. Rivalries turn to botched assassinations. Everyone’s on edge, but there are moments of levity and camaraderie, the edges of perpetual peril having been softened by familiarity and the necessity of reclaiming some small joys of being alive. Even as the mode and time period switch to one of reconstruction, the incredible success is primarily one of vibes, be they immaculate or unsettling. 

Resurrection
(2025 | China | 156 minutes | Bi Gan)

Back in 1994 on Built to Spill’s “Car”, lead singer Doug Martsch plaintively wails about wanting to see movies of his dreams. It’s a nice lyric, but one that I — a person who would almost always prefer specifics or even the general idea — have never quite been able to understand. But all these decades later, the idea that the dreams themselves aren’t enough has stuck in my head as a perplexing insight into the rich tapestry of humanity. After all, legions of people with aphantasia, and I wonder if something along these lines informs the vast chasm for acceptance vs. revulsion of generative AI.

All of this is to say that I am maybe not the ideal audience for Bi Gan’s audacious semi-anthology ode to cinema as informed by the dream state. My first attempt to watch it was foiled by scheduling at the Orcas Island Film Festival; appropriately enough, I nodded off an hour into a late-night home screening (resulted in some of my most sound sleep in weeks); when the stars of alertness and availability converged, I watched the rest and can see what so much of the fuss is about. Over five loose chapters, the film envisions an oppressive future society divided by those who’ve sacrificed imagination for longevity and grotesqueries who still dream. A silent film-style introduction introduces the sci-fi premise before dipping into the dreams of one of these oddities. Spanning a noirish mystery, a meditative dream logic monastery ghost story, a sun-kissed story of a con-artist and orphan duo, the film’s pinnacle is a gutsy, seemingly uncut take. Bathed in red light, a couple meets on the eve of the new millennium, falls in love, descends into a grimy underworld with surprising revelations. Across the board, the production value is astonishing. Although each subsequent episode got closer to my own personal taste, I also couldn’t break free of the sense that this was an incredibly accomplished exercise that earned more admiration than adoration.