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The Russian alphabet lacks an exact equivalent for the letter “H,” so native speakers often substitute the “G” sound; hence, “Harry Potter” becomes “Harry Potter.” This amusing quirk is often recalled in the otherwise uninspired My Unwanted Friends: Part I — The Last Air in Moscow. In this fascinating and deeply moving five-year documentary, Russian-American filmmaker Yulia Lokteva follows several Moscow journalists, most of them women in their twenties and thirties, through the increasingly dark months of late 2021 and early 2022. For many journalists, Harry Potter serves as an important source of escapism, frivolity, and the counterculture of totalitarianism. Alesya Marokhovskaya, a reporter for the news agency Important Stories, bakes a bright pink birthday cake for her friend in honor of a similar gesture from Harry’s faithful friend Hagrid. Ksenia Mironova, who works for the independent Dozhd channel, shows a picture of herself with Tom Felton, the actor who played Harry’s nemesis Draco Malfoy. When Russia launches a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, it doesn’t take long for journalists to turn in shock to their favorite pop culture icon. They’re not alone: as the first months of the war unfold, Russian social media is reportedly awash with Potter references, many of which cast jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny as the heroic young Harry, and Vladimir Putin, naturally, as Voldemort.
Life, however much it imitates art, has a long-standing aversion to happy endings in art. Navalny died in prison last year, Putin remains in power, and the war in Ukraine continues three and a half years after it began. By returning to that ominous moment of calm before the storm, My Unwanted Friends: Part I functions, in a way, as a pre-dystopian time capsule. “The world you are about to see no longer exists,” Lokteva says at the beginning. She arrived in Moscow in October 2021, shortly after the government, in suppressing mass protests in support of Navalny, began labeling independent journalists “foreign agents.” Among this rapidly growing class of undesirables was Lokteva’s friend Anna Nemzer, a talk show host on the TV Rain channel (and the film’s co-director). Over the next few months, Lokteva filmed Nemzer and several of her friends and fellow journalists meticulously and relentlessly. In an effort to be as slick and unnoticeable as possible, she worked alone and filmed on an iPhone. The last footage we see was taken on March 2, 2022, the day almost all of Lokteva’s main participants left Russia. With the outbreak of war in Ukraine, they rightly feared that government harassment of journalists and blocking of any material that did not fit the propaganda narrative would only intensify.
What we are witnessing in these terrible months is a stunning epic of uncertainty, anxiety, despair and defiant, illogical hope – and Lokteva, a director of incredible patience, takes her time. My Unwanted Friends: Part I, which begins a week-long run at the Film Forum on Friday, is divided into five, hour-long chapters, each driven by a sickening sense of collective dread, and a journalistic spirit that feels fragile, resilient and hard-won. The film’s mesmerising power comes from our knowledge of what lies ahead, even when the people on screen, despite their expertly honed minds and well-founded suspicions, have no idea. It more or less fits the Hitchcockian definition of suspense, and Lokteva, who is still best known for her screenwriting, has long displayed some of the old master’s instincts. (Hence the piercing precision of her 2007 feature film Day Night Day Night, a dry existential thriller about a 19-year-old aspiring suicide bomber who prepares, step by step, with each agonizing blow, to blow herself up in Times Square.)
The subtitle, “The Last Air in Moscow,” is apt and evocative. The women we meet are free to roam—Lokteva films them walking down the street, sitting and texting in cars, navigating the bustle of the newsroom, and spending time in their own and other people’s apartments—but ultimately there is a sense of being in a closed cell, slowly being sucked dry of all the oxygen. This may seem sadistic; indeed, sadism is a kind of Hitchcockian virtue. But this is real life, not fiction, and Lokteva is not coldly observing her characters from above, or leading them along on invisible strings. She is right there with them, and her camera, hovering just a few centimeters from their faces, seems to record everything: phone calls, work meetings, pet hugs, group
Sourse: newyorker.com
