Here’s the scoop: My Undesirable Friends: Part II—Exile, the sequel to Julia Loktev’s monumental documentary from last year, is playing across two sections We are selling each section as its own ticketed screening, so you need two tickets to see My Undesirable Friends: Part II—Exile in full.
Here is the schedule for My Undesirable Friends: Part II—Exile:
Fri., Nov. 13 | 7 pm | Section I
Sat., Nov. 14 | 2 pm | Section I
Sat., Nov. 14 | 7 pm | Section II
Sun., Nov. 15 | 2 pm | Section II
In the first part of her monumental documentary diptych, My Undesirable Friends: Part I—Last Air in Moscow, Julia Loktev followed a network of outspoken broadcast journalists whose independent Russian news network became endangered for dissent against the Putin regime in the buildup to the invasion of Ukraine in 2021. Its staff, mostly women, finally had to escape their country, which Loktev captured with remarkable immediacy and escalating tension. In her expansive and equally intimate second chapter, Loktev picks up precisely where she left off, continuing to trace the paths of these government-branded “foreign agents,” who have dispersed across Eastern and Western Europe and even farther afield. Despite having been sentenced in absentia to prison on charges of espionage, many of them plan to return home one day; in the meantime, they persist in spreading the word about the battlefield atrocities in Ukraine. An epic that’s spread across Kyiv, Prague, Tbilisi, Amsterdam, Latvia, and New York, My Undesirable Friends: Part II—Exile brings Loktev’s cinematic achievement into full focus: like her undaunted subjects, she shows a commitment to bearing witness to the world’s injustices despite the powerful forces that try to silence us.