My Undesirable Friends: Part 2—Exile

At the close of the five-and-a-half-hour film My Undesirable Friends: Part I—Last Air in Moscow, the last remaining holdouts of non-state news media in Russia are driven into exile. Already labeled “foreign agents,” harassed, jailed, and sometimes killed, they flee the country within days of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. This epic, thrillingly urgent sequel, likewise shot on an iPhone, records their fates since. The largely young, female protagonists scatter first to Istanbul, then throughout Europe and beyond. Officially banned at home, stubbornly independent TV Rain persists in reaching millions of Russians from a new headquarters in Latvia, even as constantly shifting politics imperil every refuge. Meanwhile, spies, threats, poisoning, further forced relocations, long-distance liquidation of personal assets, and other bitter pills constitute these brave colleagues’ reminders of “home.” Nonetheless, they keep reporting truths whose expression could exact the ultimate price, even as other nations (including our own) edge toward crackdowns on the free press.