My Undesirable Friends: Part II – Exile: documentary sequel exposing Russian media censorship is every bit as gripping as its first instalment

• Reviewed from the 2026 Venice Film Festival

The highly anticipated sequel to Julia Loktev’s acclaimed, Oscar-shortlisted 2024 documentary My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air In Moscow has premiered at the Venice International Film Festival. The six-hour epic My Undesirable Friends: Part II – Exile is as gripping as the first instalment, and even more sprawling, as its subjects scatter across the globe. With remarkably intimate access, it follows the dozen or so journalists, nearly all women, that we came to know in Part I, after they leave Russia in March 2022 to regroup in exile following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and an escalating crackdown on independent media. 

Part II feels more chaotic and unstructured, accurately reflecting what life has become like for its subjects, as they face the profound disorientation of sudden exile, and a new set of challenges to reporting the truth to Russian citizens. More than anything, it amounts to an urgent warning: fascism can take hold stealthily, and you can lose your country before you notice. 

Loktev, a presence just out of frame as ally and confidante, briefly recaps Part I, but it helps to have seen it to understand what is at stake for these journalists as they land anywhere they can without visas, most of them initially to Istanbul or Tbilisi. They grapple with complex emotions, and the cognitive dissonance of feeling at once wartime aggressors and victims, continuing to actively resist Putin’s government, but ashamed they did not do more as citizens of what is now a pariah state to many. Their grief over their own losses sparks guilt, as they know they are still comfortable relative to Ukrainians living under bombs. 

Ksenia Mironova is the only main character to re-enter Russia, as she risks attending the sentencing of her journalist husband, handed 22 years in a penal colony. The independent Russian-language channel TV Rain relaunches a base in Latvia, but its license is soon cancelled due to the use of the phrase “our army” on air, a slip that shows just how fragile their welcome is. Star longform journalist Elena returns from occupied Ukraine and receives information that she is on a checkpoint kill list. An out lesbian, in itself making her a target in Russia, she rejoins her partner but faces a long recovery after a poisoning.   

Loktev draws edge-of-seat drama even from office settings. Masterful editing (by Loktev together with Michael Taylor) gathers visceral tension into a rising tide of danger, through unnerving scenes of threat and surveillance, as the deadly hand of Putin’s regime reaches tremendously committed dissenters in the heart of Europe.