My Undesirable Friends – Part 2: Exile
(2026 | USA | 355 min | Julia Loktev)
The second entry in Julia Loktev’s My Undesirable Friends series, Exile, takes place just days after the conclusion of Part I, when all of the journalists at the last remaining independent TV outlet in Russia, TV Rain, were forced to flee the country after the invasion of Ukraine. Taking place from 2022 to early 2026, Loktev follows the journalists as they scatter across the globe, hopping from country to country as each new home becomes increasingly unviable for either their personal safety or their continued coverage of Russian news.
Though the film is largely in the same format — handheld iPhone cinematography of domestic hangouts — the effect is quite different from Last Air in Moscow, which had the quality of a present-tense community portrait moving inexorably towards a conclusion its characters thought impossible. Even more than being about journalism, Last Air in Moscow struck me as a film about the ways we convince ourselves everything will be okay in the face of rising authoritarian power, whether that be through hero narratives or the maintained illusion of daily life. In Exile, any semblance of normalcy is completely shattered. This ends up being a much more action-packed scenario than Part I, prompting one character to even describe her life as being stuck in a low-budget spy film. Indeed, this film features espionage, a dangerous trip back to Russia, a criminal sentencing, and even a poisoning. The effect is an anxious drift that makes each successive departure and arrival, complete with a set of desperate embraces, incredibly moving.
Spread across the world, with a few of the journalists eventually moving to the US, part of the film’s interest is seeing the range of problems faced by each journalist depending on where they’ve landed. For the middle-aged Anna Nemzer, hopping from Israel to Latvia to Georgia to the US also means uprooting her daughter, who treats each subsequent move as a fresh heartbreak. For another journalist, even though she has started a new life with a new girlfriend in Europe, she still plans to return to Russia and face a prison sentence.
Through these proceedings, which includes a final blow to the journalists’ hope of returning to their homeland (the death of Navalny), their unwavering commitment to their work becomes a Sisyphean feat. It’s easy to come up with reasons for why the work is important, whether that be the principle of asserting non-propagandistic reality or, as they describe it, supporting a minority that feels helpless and alone, but feeling the durational struggle in this episodic form is another beast entirely.
My Undesirable Friends — Part II: Exile played at NYFF on September 27. It is distributed by MUBI, entering limited theatrical release this weekend.