Following her mammoth five-hour odyssey “My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow,” Julia Loktev’s sequel remains just as riveting, if not more so, in its continued depiction of journalists escaping the Russian government. Its predecessor’s endpoint (one Loktev could not have foreseen when she began shooting on her iPhone X) was the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and the overnight escape of her close friends from Moscow after they were branded foreign agents for reporting on war crimes. “My Undesirable Friends: Part II – Exile” follows their stories amidst this exodus, a globetrotting journey that proves harrowing in unexpected ways over an engrossing five chapters, spanning 355 minutes.
“Exile” begins with a brisk, five-minute recap of events, which goes a long way toward reintroducing Loktev’s subjects. It also imbues the film with immediate tension. With only small suitcases and the clothes on their backs, the young journalists of independent outfits like TV RAIN find themselves suddenly scattered across cities like Warsaw, Istanbul, Prague and Tel Aviv. They go anywhere that will grant them temporary refuge, even as they wrestle with their own ethics in relation to each new nation’s politics, when compared and contrasted with their homeland.
As the sands shift beneath their feet, the subjects are practically the only constant in each other’s lives — as is Loktev, who’s there to capture them at their best and worst. Rare are the films that remain so transfixed by the conundrums inherent to living in a murky world, or that pursue the emotional and psychological dimensions of political journalism with such disarming simplicity. Let it be a warning of things to come, or a comfort once they inevitably do. There’s no untangling the two anymore. Not for people who’ve dedicated their lives to sounding the alarm, even as they wonder if they might be too late.
