← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
A New Documentary Details the Last Days of Independent Media in Russia
00:26:32
A new documentary called "My Undesirable Friends" follows Russian journalists navigating the intense press climate around the war in Ukraine.
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- [00:08]
Alison Stewart
This is all of it. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in soho. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. I'm really grateful you are here. On today's show, visual artist Maris Jones is here to talk about her new book, unlock your aesthetic. We'll get tips on how to take better photos from New York Magazine's creative director, Jody Kwan and editor Christopher Bonannos. And we'll continue travel week with a conversation about one of the trickiest things to plan, how to plan a group trip. That is our plan. Let's get this started with the new documentary, My Undesirable Friends. Imagine tuning into a news program you like and seeing this. This program is created by a foreign source of mass media serving the function of a foreign agent. That's a phrase we see early in the new documentary, My Undesirable Friends, Part one, Last air in Moscow, which follows journalists in Russia beginning in 2021. It's a disclaimer that the film's first subjects, the independent Russian language news network Rain tv, had to include before any every one of their broadcasts. They also had to identify themselves and their guest as, quote, unquote, foreign agents. If they didn't, the Russian government could choose to find them into bankruptcy. That's where director Julia Lokt's documentary begins. But over the course of five parts, the situation becomes more dire for the independent reporters. Russian citizens taking a critical look at their country. Russia invades Ukraine. My Undesirable Friends is an intimate slow burn at media under threat and how incrementally government oppression can take place. It opens at the film forum on August 15th. And joining me now in studio is director Julia Lochtev. Julia, thank you for being with us.
- [02:12]
Julia Loktev
Hi, Alison. Great to be here.
- [02:13]
Alison Stewart
All right. This film begins with a friend of yours who's also a journalist, Anna. How did the idea of following Anna with a camera come up in the first place?
- [02:24]
Julia Loktev
I read an article in the New York Times that was about Russian journalists in the summer of 2021 being declared foreign agents and fighting back with humor. And I think humor was part of what attracted me to the story. Of course, I'm originally from Russia. I was born in the Soviet Union, but I've been in the States since I was 9. But I definitely kept up with news of what was happening there. And I knew Anya, who was a host at TV Rain, which was Russia's last remaining independent TV channel. Right now, it's impossible to imagine that they were ever allowed to operate in Russia, but We see how quickly things can change under authoritarianism. At that point, they still were able to exist and still able to speak truth to power. And she had this show called who's Got the Power? Focusing on civil society leaders, people that were trying to do still something to make this society better under an authoritarian leader. And so I contacted Anya and I said, this is interesting. Let's do something about this. And you described it really well. It's like if we started this show and you had to first play something saying, this is brought to you by a foreign agent, and here's Julia, who's a foreign agent. And then increasingly, all your guests were getting declared foreign agents, and that's all you ended up saying half the time, is that, oh, so and so is a foreign agent, and so and so is a foreign agent. And we started out with that idea, of course, not knowing that we were walking into capturing history.
- [03:53]
Alison Stewart
What did Anya think about being followed? Journalists don't often like to be the story.
- [03:58]
Julia Loktev
Absolutely. That is a really good question. Like all of my characters. And they're not all a TV reign. Some of them are print journalists, some of them had a podcast, but they were all used to telling the story themselves. But I think they had this sense that something was happening to them that was important because it wasn't always like that. And we know that things change very, very fast. And I think she had a sense that something important is happening, I mean, a part of society, not only the media, because it was also civil society. Leaders and civil society organizations are being declared other. We don't belong in this society. We have to mark ourselves everywhere we go as being suspect. And I think she had a sense that that is something we have to document, of course, not knowing how it was going to go.
- [04:47]
Alison Stewart
I want you to talk a little bit about what TV Rain was like. Like, there's a band playing in this corner. It's sor. What was it like initially when you walked in?
- [04:57]
Julia Loktev
Oh, my God. TV Rain looked like no news channel I'd ever seen. They have hot pink neon everywhere. There's a sign over the director's office in neon saying sex. There's bands playing. It was the center of the Russian opposition community. For example, if you saw Navalny, a lot of the footage is from TV Rain, because people were watching Navalny's Return live on TV Rain, sort of like the way we watched the OJ Chase, for example. Like people were tuning in and watching it live. Something was going on, Protests were going on. That's where you tuned in to Watch. And it was a community, it was a center. And it looked more like MTV from a certain point than it did like a news channel. It looked real.
- [05:40]
Alison Stewart
I was like, I recognize this very much.
- [05:42]
Julia Loktev
Exactly. And their motto was Optimistic Channel. Wow. The Optimistic Channel. Optimistic Channel.
- [05:48]
Alison Stewart
What terms did you have with Anya and with the journalists about how far you would go, how far you would reach? Considering that they did sense that there.
- [05:59]
Julia Loktev
Was something about to happen, That's a really important question. So because the security situation and their safety situation was changing every day, all of them lived in fear of being searched. Some of them had already been searched. They were all trying to figure out, like, what happens next? Can I stay here and work or am I going to get arrested? And so the agreement that I had, and it was just a verbal agreement at first, like, literally just a conversation, I said, you're gonna get to review all your footage for safety and security of you and your loved ones. And if there's something that threatens your safety, you're gonna get to make that decision at the time the film comes out. Because of course, it didn't matter if you consent to it at the time of filming. You know, it's a situation that is changing on the ground all the time. And we actually went through the entire film and we're incredibly meticulous about it. Where even, like, if a makeup person appeared in the background, let's say she's now working as a, you know, makeup person in Moscow still, like, and she's not an anchor on tv, Rain. We would get consent from her and make sure now, like, as we were getting ready to release the film, either blur them or get consent from them.
- [07:08]
Alison Stewart
I'm speaking with Julia Laktev, director of the film My Undesirable Friends, Part one, Last air in Moscow. It opens at film forum on August 15, when they had to say that they were labeled for foreign agents. First of all, what does the term mean? And how do you find out you're a foreign agent? Does somebody show up at your house? Do you get a letter? How do you know?
- [07:30]
Julia Loktev
It's a little perverse. So the Ministry of so Called justice would put out a list on Friday nights around 8 o', clock. So people would be having dinner and they'd see the new list of foreign agents being released. And it sort of felt like, you know, when you see the High School Musical stars being announced, like this week's announcement is, and everybody would be sitting there checking their phones and get the new batch of foreign agents, and they continue to do that to this day, I mean, when we started, there were only like 25 individual foreign agents. Now there's hundreds.
- [07:59]
Alison Stewart
What did it mean for a person to be a foreign agent?
- [08:03]
Julia Loktev
Well, as you said, if you were declared Alison Stewart foreign agent, you would have to first of all say this before everything you put out in public. Like, you would have to say it on your show because you could get fined and eventually go to jail if you didn't. But not only that, but you would have to put it on your Instagram. Pictures of your cat, if you have a cat, or your vacation, pictures on your comments on your friends, Facebook posts. Everywhere you went in public, every public appearance had to be marked by this. And you had to like report all of your personal expenses to the government and those could be made public. So I don't know, you bought lunch today at Sweet Green. That would have to be declared because it was supporting the foreign, you know, the activities of a foreign agent.
- [08:50]
Alison Stewart
It's interesting because Anya and her colleagues, they sort of wear the foreign agent label almost as a source of cred in a certain way. I'm wondering if you're tuning into their program and you see Foreign Agent, does that give a little bit of cred? Like, oh, they must be telling the truth in some way or is it different for the people who are watching?
- [09:13]
Julia Loktev
I think that people tried to say, like, it's a mark of quality. And it felt like, you know, great people were being declared foreign Asians. But I think that's a way of making yourself feel better. I mean, obviously being othered by your country, when you're a journalist trying to reach the widest audience possible, hopefully people who may not already agree with you, that marks your work as being suspect and gets in the way. And of course, now Russia has gone much further and made it pretty much illegal to do journalism, really. And since the start of the full scale war, it's become worse and worse. So most of the people who were, let's say, just foreign agents now the media has been declared an undesirable organization where giving them an interview is a crime. TV Rain's now an undesirable organization. A bunch of the characters have criminal cases against them for discreditation of the army. So if they went back to, I mean, they're all now in exile and that's important to say, but they would be arrested and none of them can go back to Russia.
- [10:14]
Alison Stewart
Right now I'm speaking with Julia Lochtev, the director of the film My Undesirable Friends. It opens at film forum on August 15th. Now, you shot all of this, most of this on an iPhone?
- [10:25]
Julia Loktev
I did.
- [10:26]
Alison Stewart
Was that a choice? Was that a necessity? How did it come to be?
- [10:30]
Julia Loktev
It was an improvised, very quick decision at a dinner that was happening at Anya's house. And there was so much happening. And I picked up the phone and started filming it, and I never looked back because it gave the film this intimacy. I mean, hope, you know, it doesn't feel like a normal documentary. I always have to say that because they're like five and a half hour film about Russian journalists that sounds a little, you know, but there's no interviews. It's really hanging out with people. It's like you went to visit your brilliant friend in Russia right before the war, and then she introduced you to her other brilliant friends, and you just hang out with them at this historic moment. The iPhone was great for that.
- [11:07]
Alison Stewart
You're filming in apartments, private spaces, in cars. How did filming on the phone give you access to these moments?
- [11:16]
Julia Loktev
We're all so used to having a phone around, and I think people just stop to notice it after a while. You know, it's so. It creates an intimacy. And that's. I think, what I hear from people who watch the film is it feels like you're right there. There's an immediacy, an intimacy to it. And I think the phone is very much a part of it, you know.
- [11:37]
Alison Stewart
Did you ever stop filming? Because one, it was dangerous, or two, maybe too personal.
- [11:45]
Julia Loktev
I mean, I left it up to people. They could always say stop, you know, but it was also. There's this incredible moment in the film, you know, because I just, you know, I stick the camera on people and I stay with them. And I walked into a cafe to meet one of the young characters. She's just 23, and this is. She's on the phone, everybody's leaving the country. She's trying to figure out her fiance is in jail on treason charges. She feels like she can't leave. And I walk in and she's crying, and what do I do? You know, it's my responsibility. I start filming her and I just wait for her to tell me to stop. She doesn't tell me to stop, and I just am right there with the camera filming her. And then afterwards I said, you know, I felt a little guilty just as a human being, like, I'm sorry you were going through this and I'm sticking a camera in your face. And she's like, that's okay. I film people all the time. I get it. And there was Something incredible about watching, you know, working with professional journalists who were very aware of storytelling and kind of knew what they were getting into.
- [12:40]
Alison Stewart
It was interesting to see how much they dealt with phones in the film. Some of the tension comes from them not knowing if their colleagues are being arrested. Sometimes the tension is built up by them not knowing if the information was right, was it wrong? In many ways, they seem tied to the phones. Should I stay here? Should I go out? How both, just from your point of view, how is it both a positive and a negative for these journalists?
- [13:12]
Julia Loktev
I think that's for all of us now, in a time of crisis, your phone is your connection to the world. It's how you know what's going on. It's not only how you communicate with people, but it is the place from where all news come. All. Everything is connected through your phone. So it's very much part of it.
- [13:29]
Alison Stewart
It was interesting. In one of the shots, you see a woman, and she's very much in distress, but you also see, like, a giant BL on her phone. And I was thinking, is their personal life and their professional life both existing in this little device at the same time?
- [13:47]
Julia Loktev
I think it is for all of us, isn't it? You know, like, that's. And that's important also, as to say, is like, most of my characters are extremely young.
- [13:55]
Alison Stewart
They are young.
- [13:55]
Julia Loktev
They're like 23, 26. They have lived in their phones. I mean, that's where, you know, they're very much in Instagram. They're getting their news from Telegram, their TikTok. I mean, that's very much part of their world. You know, they're in there.
- [14:14]
Alison Stewart
We're speaking with Julia Lochtev. She's the director of the film My Undesirable Friends, Part one. Last air in Moscow. We'll have more after a quick break. This is all of it. You're listening to all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. We're talking about the film My Undesirable Friends, Part one, Last air in Moscow. It opens at film forum on August 15th. I'm speaking to its director, Julia Lakhdev. Okay, so initially, you're following your friends around this newsroom about this oppression, the oppression for speaking truth of power, let's say. And one of the things that I noticed was there's a lot of dark humor in newsrooms, and it comes through in the film a lot. Why did you want to take a look at the sense of humor in the film?
- [15:13]
Julia Loktev
Well, the humor was just there, and I'M inherently attracted to it. And I think gallows humor is a lot of how these characters and frankly, a lot of people deal with horrible things happening around them. And there's a lot of kind of friendship and love and community and camaraderie and humor. And that's a huge part of the film.
- [15:34]
Alison Stewart
There are the critics at the end of each chapter. They have titles like the Holiday Special, you know, and Vulture's review is interesting. It compared them to a sitcom calling it a Wry Touch was their word. What were those elements supposed to mean? And what were we supposed to get.
- [15:51]
Julia Loktev
From those moments from the Holiday Special, for example? I mean, it was literally the holiday special that. So the third chapter, three ends with New Year's Eve, which is like the biggest holiday in Russia. It's like Christmas and everything rolled into one. And it's that moment, you know, this is the end of 2021. Russia will invade Ukraine in two months, and nobody knows it. And they've been cracking down on journalists by now. Like every other word being said on Rain is, oh, so and so, who we must say is a foreign agent. Things are bad, and everyone is trying to desperately rally. And their motto for this New year's show is, we're not dispersing. And they're trying to have this cheerful show going like, we hope there's no war in Ukraine. We are sending good wishes to Ukraine and, you know, how do we keep fighting? They're all trying to figure out how to stay in the country and just keep working. And it's almost hysterical. They're all wearing, like, sequins and trying to dance and sing in the midst of, like, just terrible things happening around them. And they're hanging on.
- [16:54]
Alison Stewart
The film is five and a half hours long. How did you decide, yes, I'm going to have five and a half hours to tell this story?
- [17:05]
Julia Loktev
Well, Putin kind of decided it for me in a way, because when I started out, I thought it was gonna be a film called the Lives of Foreign Agents, about these journalists just trying to figure out how to live with this new level of repression. And then I ended up being there at this historic time. I was there in the first week of the full scale war as Russia was shutting down all independent media, as 1 million people ended up leaving Russia, including most of civil society, you know, most of the opposition, because it just became impossible to be there. And I felt incredibly. It feels strange to say this in the context of the horrific war Russia is waging in Ukraine, but as a director and as a witness, I Felt incredibly lucky to have captured all this in real time through people that you get to know, get to, like, hang out with, fall in love with. And so it felt like I had this bit of history, but told through just characters. People do compare it to weird things. I mean, I've heard everything from a sitcom to a thriller to a horror show to a reality show to a Russian novel. And it's this weird. What's it that I think blends all of it. And it made sense to make it kind of to take the time to live through this with them.
- [18:14]
Alison Stewart
Oh, it seemed like cinema verite. It's happening right in front of you, and you watch as things change moment by moment by moment. And that is what keeps your attention. At first you're like, okay, I'm sit down for five hours. But then you really become riveted in these people and what decisions they're having to make in a moment's notice.
- [18:32]
Julia Loktev
Exactly. Like you're living through it with them. Because it all culminates in that first week where it's difficult to report in Russia. Yes, it's difficult. We're trying to figure out how long we can stay here. And then Russia invades Ukraine, which none of them can imagine. Like, they can't imagine it. The night before the war had been going on at a low scale for seven, almost eight years at that point. People had gotten used to that. But bombing Kyiv, utterly unimaginable. And then Russia really cracks down. They start saying, you can't call the war a war. That alone is a crime. Every single thing you say has to be followed by, this has not been confirmed by the Russian Ministry of Defense, you know, every single thing. It really becomes impossible to do journalism. And day by day, like, each day, they're trying to figure out, can we work one more day? Can we continue to report the truth until it becomes impossible? Because Russia shuts down the media and they pass laws making it basically illegal that it would be punishable by 15 years to tell the truth. I mean, imagine like, you know, it's about how things slide slowly and then very fast. Well, that's what I'm talking about. And then, like, if today, like, you know, imagine today suddenly like it became. I'm going to make this parallel because this is a war in which the US Is complicit. If suddenly we were not able to call it the war in Gaza, that became illegal. And if you use the word genocide or famine, not only would, you know, that would mean that your media would be shut down and you could go to jail immediately. And they're all faced with this choice of, do we go to jail, where we will be pretty useless, and not reporting on anything from a jail cell, or do we go to the airport in a matter of hours? Like, literally, most of them packed their bags in a few hours, went to the airport and fled so they could continue to report the truth in exile.
- [20:31]
Alison Stewart
When you're looking back at the film, it's the old phrase of the frog boiling in water. Is that true to you?
- [20:40]
Julia Loktev
Yeah. I mean, people talk about you boil the frog slowly. And I remember, at some point, I think I cut it out. But Anya says it in the film, you boil the frog slowly, and then suddenly you boil it very, very fast. Like, things are going slow, slow, slow. And then boom. Like. And then it becomes unimaginable that the reality you existed in just a few months ago was possible.
- [21:04]
Alison Stewart
How much of your original plan for the film had to change?
- [21:11]
Julia Loktev
All of it. I mean, history happened. I mean, all of it. Like, I started out making a film about journalists who were living in Russia. You know, they all expected a crackdown of some sort to happen to them. They didn't expect Russia to invade the neighboring country. I mean, this is a historic moment. So I was responding to it, you know, and I do feel incredibly lucky to be there capturing history and documenting it. I hope not in a very dry way, but through life.
- [21:40]
Alison Stewart
Many of the people you follow, the women, are also journalists. What did you notice about journalists who are women? What situations they found themselves in, whether them being mothers or the head of family. I was just very curious.
- [21:59]
Julia Loktev
Yeah, one of them is a mom. But I mean, if the film deals with people's personalized. But, you know, I didn't start out to make a film about women on purpose. And I always joke about the fact there's men in it, too. But I always think, like, if I made a film that was 90%, it was journalists, 90% men, 10% women. Nobody would ask me, why is it all men? But I mean, we think about it like nobody ever would think about it. But it did happen to be like they are. The newsrooms were largely dominated by women, and very often they were dominated by women. They were by dominated. That was just the reality on the ground. And of course, it's that situation where usually the head editor is a man and, you know, everyone else around him is largely women. And they just happened to be. I kept. I have to film people I love. So I just kept filming the people that opened up to me that drew Me in that I wanted to film them going through all of this through their. I'm attracted to emotions. I work both in fiction and documentary, and so I just look at people as, you know, characters who you see on a screen, who you want to get invested in and connect with.
- [23:04]
Alison Stewart
Was that a problem for me, asking you the question about them being women and being journalists?
- [23:08]
Julia Loktev
No, not at all. It's just really funny. It's just really funny because everybody asks it. And I do think about how often we take for granted something like newsrooms being dominated by men. And it wasn't a problem at all. But I do think it's really funny that people think about it, but it really wasn't part of the plan, you know, it wasn't. Like I said, I am going to make a film about women journalists. They just happen to be.
- [23:29]
Alison Stewart
They're journalists who are women, the world.
- [23:31]
Julia Loktev
Journalists who are women. Exactly. And there's a lot of them and doing amazing work. And, of course, I think it does change how you connect with them. I think that's a really good question, actually.
- [23:44]
Alison Stewart
We see in the film the incremental ways that media independence and democratic norms can be taken away. What is a lesson that audiences in other countries, other countries like the United States, where media remains more independent, might take away from seeing this film? We lost $6 million recently, as you may have heard.
- [24:05]
Julia Loktev
I think what you said about boiling the frog slowly and seeing all the signs is incredibly important because it does not start with shutting down. It does not start with banning. It starts with economic pressure. I mean, that's exactly how it started in Russia. It started in a very legalese way with, you know, making it impossible to survive the way that we're seeing with NPR and the CPB now. There are so many lessons. I mean, when I was filming this film, it felt like a film still about something very distant. And even when we showed it at the New York Film Festival in October, it felt, you know, about nasty things that happen in nasty places. And now people are watching this. And there is so much that is familiar in what happened in Russia that is resonating now. A university dean getting arrested, handpicking of the presidential press pool. All these things seemed quite far away to me when I was filming and seem really close. I mean, it feels like the film becomes more urgent and more relevant every day here. And I really wish it wasn't like. I wish I would be like, yeah, it's something very far away that has nothing to do with us. But I think it's a way for people to deal with what's happening. Like watching it. I mean, I hear from people watching it that it's therapeutic because you're like, oh, this is what's happening. I see how this works.
- [25:27]
Alison Stewart
Did you learn any lessons about fighting back if you could go back in time?
- [25:34]
Julia Loktev
That's a great question. I think the lesson that I've learned from all of them is resilience and fighting despite the odds, fighting when the fight seems lost and it doesn't matter. You just have to do what you do, you know, under all these circumstances, because all of these journalists have now had to. And there's a part two to the film where I continued to follow them as they fled into exile. Like in the immediate moments up until now, they all continue to report the truth on the war. Talk about Russian war, war crimes. Even though you know it's difficult, it's not easy. You think, maybe the results aren't going to get you anywhere. But you just do what you got to do. And I think that's an important lesson.
- [26:19]
Alison Stewart
The name of the film is My Undesirable Friends, Part one, Last Air in Moscow. It opens at film forum on August 15th. I've been speaking with its director, Julia Locktev. Thank you so much for coming into the studio.
- [26:31]
Julia Loktev
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