Meryl Streep and Oscar-winning documentarian Laura Poitras (Citzenfour) have come onboard as executive producers on upcoming documentary My Undesirable Friends: Part II – Exile, Julia Loktev’s follow up to her acclaimed 2024 doc My Undesirable Friends: Part I – The Last Air in Moscow about independent journalists under fire in Russia.
In her new documentary, which will have its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, Loktev follows a group of young journalists labelled “foreign agents” by Putin’s regime. When Putin shuts down all independent media in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the reporters have to flee Moscow on a moment’s notice. Loktev follows them in exile, across a dozen countries over four years across a dozen countries as they continue to try and report the truth about their country’s war crimes, while being declared terrorists by their country’s government and facing death threats.
“Julia Loktev is the Samuel Pepys of Putin’s Russia – Alone and armed only with her cell phone camera she chronicled the dismemberment of the free press in Moscow in her first film,” said Streep in a statement. “In this second installment, she follows a group of young Russian journalists who had to flee for their lives in one night. As they scrabble to land somewhere, anywhere, with just the clothes on their backs, they somehow continue to deliver the truth to their countrymen. These beautiful, intrepid, witty and irrepressible young women and men are living witnesses to the destruction of the last vestiges of the dream of freedom of expression in Russia. It’s an intimate, compelling journey; the journalists themselves giving us access to their determination, and their despair, in turns. I felt at the end of the film as if they were members of my family, so generously do they share their loving selves. The film is a blazing achievement.”
Poitras called Loktev’s film “an epic in the tradition of the great writers of the country her family emigrated from – Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Chekhov. Documenting history unfolding in real time, Julia takes us inside the intimate and beautiful world of a group of young journalists – mostly women – as they risk their lives, and go into exile in pursuit of the truth. I am honored to stand alongside Julia and her many extraordinarily courageous and desirable friends.”
My Undesirable Friends: Part I – The Last Air in Moscow won the Gotham Independent Film Awards, the New York Film Critics Circle, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and National Society of Film Critics awards for best documentary.
“We are honored and beyond thrilled to have two of the women I admire most in the world, Meryl Streep and Laura Poitras, join My Undesirable Friends as executive producers,” Loktev said in a statement. “Their work is dedicated to telling the deepest truths — whether emotional or factual — so their support of a film about journalists who refuse to look away feels like a true act of solidarity.”
Loktev directed, produced and shot My Undesirable Friends: Part II – Exile and edited it together with Michael Taylor. After its Venice premiere, the film will screen at the New York Film Festival before opening in theaters and screening on arthouse film platform Mubi later this year.
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