My Undesirable Friends: Part 1 – Last Air in Moscow
Director and Producer Julia Loktev
Logline
American filmmaker Julia Loktev, born in the Soviet Union, returned to Moscow in 2021 to make a documentary on the persistence of independent journalism in Putin’s Russia—just months, as it turned out, before the country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. With her friend Anna Nemzer, a talk show journalist for TV Rain, Russia’s last remaining independent news channel, Loktev immerses herself with a group of young women fighting to ensure the vocalization of dissent and outspoken criticism of the country.
Phase of Support: Post-Production
Julia Loktev - Director, Producer
Julia Loktev was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and immigrated to the U.S. at age 9. She has made both fiction and documentary features. The Loneliest Planet starring Gael Garcia Bernal, received the Grand Jury Prize at the AFI Film Festival, nominations for Best Director at Independent Spirit Awards, and Best Feature at Gotham Awards, and was chosen by IndieWire as one of the “100 Best Films of Last Decade.” Day Night Day Night premiered at Cannes in Directors’ Fortnight, received two Gotham Award nominations, and earned the Someone to Watch Award at Independent Spirit Awards. Her documentary Moment of Impact won the Sundance Film Festival Documentary Directing Award and the Grand Prize at Cinéma du Reél, screened in New Directors/New Films at MoMA, and was an Independent Spirit Awards Truer Than Fiction nominee. Julia is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an Emerging Icons Award from the George Eastman Museum.
Project logline and bios courtesy of the grantees.