My Undesirable Friends: Part I - Last Air in Moscow

Intimate, wrenching, and very long portrait of a group of female journalists in Russia trying to do a job that goes from impossible to flee the country impossible. I'm in love with all of the subjects. Documentary of the moment, year, decade, millennia, whatever you've got. Worth watching for its own sake, but here in the USA it feels like a visit from Dickens' ghost of Christmas future. Spirit, are these visions of things that must be or may be only? Is it possible to change course? Scrooge had a happy ending, but real life isn't a fairytale.

As a Russian who had fierce fights with my mom because she was a staunch fan of Putin, spending 5+ precious hours watching the selfless, fearless, and dedicated truth defenders was one of my most memorable cinema experiences. It was such a joy to hear these young women say the things I deeply believe in. It reminded me that I haven't lost my country and there's still hope, as long as it has such deeply caring citizens who can shine the light on the truth in the sea of Putin's lies.

Structured around observation rather than argument, something feels fresh about My Undesirable Friends. Shot largely in tight interiors and handheld frames, the film traps itself in the same shrinking spaces its subjects occupy. Editorially, it favors long takes and unadorned scene transitions, allowing tension to accumulate through repetition rather than escalation.

Formally, the long takes, lack of narration, and observational posture create the impression of objectivity, but that restraint masks a highly curated perspective. So in a way the film's restraint is both its defining strength and its limitation. By refusing emotional punctuation, it risks monotony, but that monotony becomes thematic.

It is a great example of using monotony to tell the story of repression as a process. A low-key but unsettling portrait of pressure building over time. One of the highly unique films of the year.