Julia Loktev doesn’t mind if you compare her epic, award-winning new film to reality TV. In fact, she loves it. “I’ve heard everything from reality TV and War and Peace, to a disaster film, a thriller, and a hang-out comedy,” Loktev tells me with glee. “I’m good with all those comparisons.” She does, however, point out a key difference. “Reality shows are shot with many, many cameras. But this is a single camera. It’s just me!”

In October 2021, Loktev wasn’t planning to shoot an entire film on her iPhone. Arriving in Moscow without a cinematographer, the 56-year-old American director wanted to make a documentary about Russian journalists and their everyday life under Putin. Using a working title of The Lives of Foreign Agents, Loktev, smartphone in hand, started capturing footage of young, female reporters like Anna Nemzer, a host at TV Rain, Russia’s last remaining independent news channel. At that point, pro-Navalny journalists like Nemzer had been deemed “foreign agents” by the government, and had to precede their news coverage with comically long disclaimers. Already, Loktev knew she had more than enough for a film.

However, Loktev, a Russian-speaker who grew up in the Soviet Union until the age of 9, was unaware that she’d flown to Moscow four months before Putin declared war on Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Loktev’s film thus evolves into something else entirely: a 5.5-hour documentary called My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow. Split into five chapters, the film’s first three sections follow journalists like Nemzer, Irina Dolinina, Alesya Marokhovskaya, Sonya Groysman, Olga Churakova, Ksenia Mironova, and Elena Kostyuchenko in the months leading up to the war; the fourth and fifth chapters, set in February and March of 2022, follow reporters as they risk their lives in Moscow simply by telling the truth.

For the past year, My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow has been playing the film festival circuit with an interval at the three-hour mark. Today, I’m speaking to Loktev in mid-April, a week after the film was released on streaming. “There isn’t much difference between film critics and another kind of audience,” she tells me over Zoom from New York. “Yes, it’s a film about authoritarianism, and the long, deep, dark Russian history that explodes with the invasion of Ukraine. But, at the same time, it’s a film about people’s lives falling apart – and they’re hanging out. People respond to it on an emotional level.”

Before My Undesirable Friends, Loktev was known primarily for two carefully composed fiction features, Day Night Day Night and The Loneliest Planet. Even Loktev must admit that none of her previous films’ thrills compare to the end of My Undesirable Friends, when Loktev and the journalists flee TV Rain’s studios upon learning that Special Forces are on their way. The exit is rushed and panicked, personal belongings are left behind and everyone scatters in different directions. Despite the danger, Loktev records it all while running along herself.

Based in Brooklyn, Loktev notes that other countries could learn from her film’s conclusion that living under an authoritarian government is akin to being a frog not realising it’s being boiled alive. “If you look at Putin’s regime, the frog was boiled slowly for 20 years,” says the director. “In the early fall of ’21, it sped up to medium, and in February ’22, when Russia started a full-scale war in Ukraine, it got turned up to a high, boiling temperature.”

When we film, I almost don’t talk. It’s like therapy: the less the therapist says, the more you open up

Most of the film’s characters (which is how Loktev refers to them throughout the interview) are in their 20s and 30s. Amidst legal threats and surveillance, they joke about dressing up at home in case there’s an unexpected raid. Mironova’s fiancé is locked up for alleged treason. Marokhovskaya and Dolinina hide their gay relationship from the latter’s mother. “I’m amazed by the young people in the film,” says Loktev. “One of them says she was in the first grade when Putin came to power. As long as she’s known there was a thing called a ‘president’, it’s been Putin. Even though they don’t have evidence they can change society, they still feel like they can, and they’ll do whatever they can, every day.” 

Loktev flew to Moscow in 2021 after reading a New York Times article titled “Russian Journalists Meet a Crackdown With Dark Humor, and Subscribers” about how Churakova and Groysman responded to the “foreign agent” label by launching a podcast called Hi, You’re a Foreign Agent. The day before our interview, the New York Times ran another article, “6 Things to Add Joy to Your Day”, which lists My Undesirable Friends alongside “moon music” and the heart emoji. Loktev reveals it was shared in their “Desirable Friends” group chat. “They were laughing, like, ‘How did they find us joyful? Our lives are falling apart!’ I was like, ‘People like hanging out with you guys!’ They are joyful, even in the darkest moments. And they tell good jokes.”

Based on my conversation with Loktev, it’s clear that she’s a warm, friendly presence who remembers names (“Nick, you’re the first person to ever ask me that”) and encourages people to speak their mind. She’s also, as she puts it, “a short woman who’s not threatening”. Thus everyone in My Undesirable Friends is remarkably chatty and candid in front of Loktev. You learn about their fears, hopes, romantic lives, reasons for becoming journalists, and unfortunate obsession with Harry Potter. We get onto a separate tangent: yes, they’re all heartbroken about JK Rowling’s transphobia.

Another factor is the iPhone. Whereas Loktev witnessed a well-known documentary cinematographer zooming in on subjects from far away, she was often 3ft from the journalists due to her phone’s 58mm lens. “It’s the distance you normally are when hanging with friends,” she says. “But when we film, I almost don’t talk. It’s like therapy: the less the therapist says, the more you open up.”

In Day Night Day Night, Loktev went out with the main actor and cinematographer Benoît Debie to shoot amongst the crowds of Times Square. “It was a documentary, verité style of filming, even though it was fiction,” she recalls. “But this, I filmed myself. I’m directly responding with the camera. You have to listen and look over to where a joke is being told, or a dramatic moment is unfolding.”

When filming, does she stare at her phone, or does she try to be more present in the room? “I try to be present. I don’t want people to feel like I’m an entomologist studying bugs. There’s scenes in Part II where I try to be there for them emotionally, and so my camera work isn’t as great.” If she knows something won’t make the film, she’ll shoot reaction shots. “But I don’t want the person to think I’m not paying attention. So I keep looking at the person who’s speaking, but I’ll point the camera at someone else.”

Loktev reckons that this week she’ll finish editing the final scene of My Undesirable Friends: Part II – Exile, which picks up two days after Part I in Istanbul. “They have no idea what country they’re going to. They have no jobs. Their bank cards don’t work. Their entire lives have collapsed. And then it follows them as they continue to report on this criminal war to Russians. They try to give Russians an alternative to propaganda. They face physical threats. They face arrest in Russia. At the same time, they crack inappropriate jokes at inappropriate moments. And that’s why I love them.”

My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow is now streaming exclusively worldwide on MUBI.