Russian journalists fighting for democracy have urgent advice for Americans under Trump.

At some point in My Unwanted Friends: Part II – ExileJulia Loktev’s nearly six-hour documentary about Russian journalists struggling to cover their country’s descent into total authoritarianism, the fate of Russia’s only independent news broadcaster depends on the use of a pronoun. This part of the story lasts a few hours, after the gripping and disturbing five hours of Part I—Last Air in Moscowand the remains of the once-active TV Rain channel have been reconstituted in Latvia, where thousands of Russians fled after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The brutality of their military has made Russians, even those who opposed Putin’s regime, a controversial presence in European countries, and although the Latvian government has granted Rain the right to broadcast from within its borders, officials appear to be looking for a way to reverse an unpopular decision. So they seize on a single phrase: “our soldiers”. The argument is absurd, suggesting that because Rain broadcasts from Latvia, viewers might believe that the term, spoken in Russian by a Russian, refers to the Latvian army and not Russian troops. But the burden persists, and the film’s subjects find themselves, once again, searching for a place they can even temporarily call home.

As it turns out, “our soldiers” was used when reporting on war crimes committed by Russian troops in Ukraine – a way of accepting responsibility for their actions, despite the fact that TV Rain journalists opposed the invasion to the point where it became dangerous to do so within Russian borders. First part ends with most of Loktev’s subjects packing their bags and leaving within hours, as it becomes clear that the moment they hoped would never arrive had inevitably come to them. Even as they reported daily on the steady march of Putin’s tyranny, they lived out what remained of their lives as best they could, meeting in each other’s apartments and exchanging references to Gossip Girl And Harry Potter. Part two begins almost immediately afterwards, as these journalists flee with their hastily packed suitcases and scatter across the world, watching from afar the disintegration of the country they love. But even as they leave their old lives behind, some are still haunted by the idea that they haven’t done enough to end it. “Of course we are guilty,” says TV Rain presenter Anna Nemzer, who by this point in the film has resettled in Tel Aviv with her husband and daughter. (She is also credited as co-director of the film.) “Of course we failed and let that happen. »

It’s fair to say that Loktev, born in the Soviet Union and raised in Colorado, does not share this dim view of her subjects’ efforts. They are, as the title suggests, his friends, and after a while, they start to feel like ours too. Perhaps they failed in the impossible task of stopping the war or dethroning Putin, as those whose only power is to tell the truth often do. But Loktev finds a kind of ordinary heroism in their endurance, in the way young journalist Ksenia Mironova fights back after her fiancé, former military journalist Ivan Safronov, is arrested for treason and sentenced to 22 years in prison, or in the way Elena Kostyuchenko, who covered the war in Ukraine for the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, goes from survivor of an alleged poisoning by the Kremlin to author of a book to success in exile. Stick with them as long as Loktev does, and eventually they’ll find a way to continue. And because My unwanted friendsthe combined 11 hours allow us to experience this struggle alongside them – even when the obstacles are as mundane as running out of fresh underwear or fumbling with the keypad lock of a rented apartment while the timer on the stair lights goes off – it’s especially satisfying when the smoke begins to clear.

Unsurprisingly, Exile doesn’t have the shaggy charm of its predecessor: its characters are now permanent remote workers, unwitting digital nomads hosting podcasts with colleagues Zooming in from Ukraine. But we gain a better understanding of who they are as individuals, and the differences in their backgrounds are highlighted by the change in circumstances. Nemzer, we learn, is married to the co-founder of a podcast company and is the daughter of a prominent Solzhenitsyn scholar; When she reluctantly admits it’s time to move out of her apartment in Moscow, she asks a friend to wrap the books with her parents’ names on the spine. It’s like paying the first visit to the home of a colleague you’ve known for years, casting everything you know about them in a slightly different light. In a sense, Loktev’s exiles are all in the same boat, but some paddle with bigger oars. This relative good fortune, however, only deepens their feeling of guilt. “We wanted to have a good life,” Kostyuchenko recalls. “Look at the carnage this has led to, this desire for comfort. »

When Last air in Moscow Released in theaters last year, Mironova, who has now resettled in New York, described the strange sensation of seeing the United States following her country down the path to fascism. “This is exactly what was happening in Russia 20 years ago,” she told me. Exile is a vision of the end of the road and a warning about the dangers of protecting normality at all costs. Towards the end of Exilean American asks Kostyuchenko what we can learn from his experience. “Remain alarmed,” Kostyuchenko warns. “Be hysterical if you need to. It’s very easy to lose your country.”