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MY UNDESIRABLE FRIENDS PART II – EXILE (NYFF 2026) – Review by Jennifer Merin

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Documentary films come to an end, mostly within two hours time and often with an informative text that delivers conclusive statistics or a brief description about what has happened to the subject(s) after the final frame of the film. It’s not that filmmakers lose interest in or concern about their subjects. Rather, their production is shaped by platform time slots and considerations of viewer stamina. Short form is increasingly popular, perhaps as a test or a tease for a longer telling in the future.

Filmmaker Julia Loktev is shooting for a different sort of cinema experience, a monumental chronicling that takes its time to give the audience a sense of shared real time ‘you-are-there’ viewing of historical events that she has witnessed and recorded — all having to do with repression of independent journalism in Putin’s Russua.

That is an ongoing situation. Loktev embedded herself with the independent journalists and has been chronicling since October, 2021, when the Russian government srarted branding independent journalists and media workers as ‘foreign agents,’ leading up to the February invasion of Ukraine, when TV RAIN, the last independent broadcsst channel in Russia, was shut down and staff journalists who were reporting negatively on the invasion were forced to flee their homeland. Loktev’s My Undesirable Friends Part I – Last Air in Moscow (2024) showed that chapter of the ongoing story in five and a half hours. It was gripping, and it was short listed for an Oscar.

The success of My Undesirable Friends Part I – Last Air in Moscow raised awareness of the Russian independent journalists’ repression and peril, but it didn’t resolve the serious issues it raised, nor did the celebratory kudos distract Loktov, who was resolved to follow her truth-telling subjects into exile whevever they could find shelter and (relative) safety as they continued to report truthfully about Russia’s human rights violations in Ukraine.

Now comes My Undesirable Friends Part II – Exile, Exxecutive produced by Meryl Streep and Laura Poitras, it is a six-hour far ranging yet intimate epic in which Loktev follows subjects Anna Nemzer (who also co-directed), Ksenia Mironova, Elena Kostyuchenko, Alesya Marokhovskaya, Sonya Groysman, Nataliya Gumenyuk, Peter Ruzavin, Valeria Ratnikova and Yana Kuchina as they seek safety and stability in Latvia (Riga, where TV Rain initially re-established a base), Ukraine (Kyiv), Poland (Warsaw), Czech Republic (Prague), Turkey (Istanbul), Georgia (Tbilisi), Israel (Tel Aviv) and The Netherlands (Amsterdam).

Each of these courageous and dedicated journalists (most of whom are women, I sould mention) faces a different set of daunting personal and professional challenges, but they are still reporting, still determined to shout out the truth as loudly and widely as they can.

If you’ve watched My Undesirable Friends Part I – Last Air in Moscow, you already know their faces and circumstances, and are eager to know their news. If you’re new to the crew, you’ll quickly come to care about them and to appreciate their mettle.

Julia Loktev has not announced a My Undesirable Friends Part III, but if/when there is more story to tell, it seems likely that she will be the filmmaker to tell it.

Meanwhile, binge watching the 12 hours of Parts I and II is a strenuous exercise in watching. Pace yourself so you can absorb it all. And, it’s important that you do because independent truth-telling journalism is continually challenged worldwide.

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Jennifer Merin

Jennifer Merin is the Film Critic for Womens eNews and contributes the CINEMA CITIZEN blog for and is managing editor for AWFJ.org, the online magazine of the Alliance of Women Film Journalists, of which she is President. She has served as a regular critic and film-related interviewer for The New York Press and About.com. She has written about entertainment for USA Today, The L.A. Times, US Magazine, Ms. Magazine, Endless Vacation Magazine, NY Daily News, New York Post, SoHo News and other publications. After receiving her MFA from Tisch School of the Arts (Grad Acting), Jennifer performed at the O'Neill Theater Center's Playwrights Conference, Long Wharf Theater, American Place Theatre and LaMamma, where she worked with renown Japanese director, Shuji Terayama. She subsequently joined Terayama's theater company in Tokyo, where she also acted in films. Her journalism career began when she was asked to write about Terayama for The Drama Review. She became a regular contributor to the Christian Science Monitor after writing an article about Marketta Kimbrell's Theater For The Forgotten, with which she was performing at the time. She was an O'Neill Theater Center National Critics' Institute Fellow, and then became the institute's Coordinator. While teaching at the Universities of Wisconsin and Rhode Island, she wrote "A Directory of Festivals of Theater, Dance and Folklore Around the World," published by the International Theater Institute. Denmark's Odin Teatret's director, Eugenio Barba, wrote his manifesto in the form of a letter to "Dear Jennifer Merin," which has been published around the world, in languages as diverse as Farsi and Romanian. Jennifer's culturally-oriented travel column began in the LA Times in 1984, then moved to The Associated Press, LA Times Syndicate, Tribune Media, Creators Syndicate and Arcamax Publishing. She's been news writer/editor for ABC Radio Networks, on-air reporter for NBC, CBS Radio and for Westwood One's America In the Morning. She is a member of the Critics Choice Association in the Film, Documentary and TV branches and a voting member of the Black Reel Awards. For her AWFJ archive, type "Jennifer Merin" in the Search Box (upper right corner of screen).