Anna Nemzer, former journalist at exiled Russian news network TV Rain, offered a word of warning today — don’t ignore “unpleasant” political signs. That comes from someone with firsthand knowledge of the aftershocks. “All countries are different, and we have a lot of countries under dictatorships, under authoritarian regimes.
But we also have democratic countries with very unpleasant signs. And if we can share something of our experience, it would be don’t ignore unpleasant signs — they definitely become something more important and bigger than just signs. It won’t pass,” she said after American filmmaker Julia Loktev ’s multi-part documentary My Undesirable Friends: The Last Air In Moscow screened for press at the New York Film Festival ahead of its official world premiere.
The doc follows a group of young journalists, mostly women, reporting writing, producing and delivering the news as the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin grows increasingly repressive, slapping a “foreign agent” (or “undesirable”) designation on outlets the reported the actual news, like Rain. The designation, a required scroll under any broadcast or digital content, was met with black humor by the staff of Rain’s popular newscasts. Police activity ramped up arrests, and this was all before Putin invaded Ukraine and protests really exploded.
Loktev said she was drawn to the story as “a lot of media had started to be named foreign agents. TV Rain had already been na.
