‘My Undesirable Friends: Part 1 — Last Air in Moscow’ Review: A Scary and Riveting Portrait of Russia’s Last Independent News Channel

“Sadism disguised with the lacework of words” is how Anna Nemzer, a talk show journalist with TV Rain, Russia’s last independent news channel, describes Putin’s twisting of phrases in “My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow.” And “being at the right place at the right time — or the wrong place at the wrong time,” is how “The Loneliest Planet” director Julia Loktev has described the circumstances that led to the documentary she’s made about Nemzer’s work. First conceived as a look at the daily lives of reporters who’ve been branded “foreign agents” by their own government, the essence of the project — now a five-part, five-and-a-half-hour epic — was profoundly transformed four months into production, when Russia launched a full-scale invasion against Ukraine.

To read the rest of my New York Film Festival review visit IndieWire.