Film Forum

Shortlisted for the 2026 Academy Award® for Documentary Feature Film

WINNER, BEST FEATURE DOCUMENTARY, 2025 GOTHAM AWARDS
WINNER, BEST NON-FICTION FEATURE, 2025 NEW YORK FILM CRITICS CIRCLE

Moscow, winter 2021: At TV Rain, the only remaining independent channel, young journalists have been branded “foreign agents”— targeted for surveillance or worse, and required to tag their reporting with a disclaimer that they are serving foreign powers. Regardless: Ksyusha furiously produces and edits stories to distract herself from her fellow-journalist fiancé’s imprisonment; Anya hosts everyday heroes of resistance on her interview show, while shielding both her sanity and her young daughter from the regime’s relentless “fuckery”; Sonya produces the “Hi, You’re a Foreign Agent” podcast at her kitchen table while beholding her empty living room (why buy a sofa when who knows what will happen to her?); Alesya fends off anxiety that her office has been bugged, while hiding her relationship with her girlfriend from her traditional mother. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is just weeks away, as these Gen-Z heroines confront propagandist absurdity and personal endangerment, fighting for the soul of a country they love to the bitter end.

Presented with support from The Ashes and Diamonds Fund for Eastern European Film

2024     324 MIN.     USA     IN RUSSIAN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES

Reviews

“AN IMPORTANT FILM. I greatly admire MY UNDESIRABLE FRIENDS. The shooting and editing combine to give a remarkable portrait of young journalists fighting to report the truth.”
– Frederick Wiseman

CRITIC'S PICK. “ONE OF THE YEAR'S MOST TOWERING ACHIEVEMENTS... BRILLIANT, RIVETING, VITAL, DEVASTATING... Perhaps the most essential investment of time you can make in a movie theater this year...  A shattering portrayal of an authoritarian government using misinformation, isolation and war to control its citizens.”
– Alissa Wilkinson, The New York Times
Read the full review.

“A STAGGERING PORTRAIT OF RUSSIAN JOURNALISTS IN DISSENT... Gripping, fiercely moving. An astonishing epic... [An] extraordinarily human cinematic document.”
– Justin Chang, The New Yorker
Read the full review.

“THE BEST DOC OF THE YEAR. Tremendous…an invaluable document about what it’s like to be one of the remaining voices of dissent in a country that has finally decided to seize control of the narrative and leave only propaganda remaining...a heartbreaking human drama about the costs of doing this work, and what it means to be prepared to lose everything for it.”
– Alison Willmore, Vulture/ New York Magazine

“A gripping vérité portrait of citizens under siege by a tyrannical leader stripping away their freedoms.”
– Tim Grierson, Rolling Stone

“An intimate, enormous, urgent political portrait of speaking truth to power, and speaking it together… Can a doc like this sustain one’s interest for 324 minutes, even with an intermission? The answer is a resounding ‘Yes, and then some.’”
– Siddhant Adlakha, Variety

“History unfolds with on-the-ground immediacy... A literal life and death struggle that's exceedingly of this moment. Yet the best documentaries have formidable underlying narratives working in concert with their overlying ones. Think of Frederick Wiseman or Heddy Honigmann, both of whom can capture transfixing verité views of, say, a Michelin-starred restaurant (MENUS-PLAISIRS LES TROISGROS) or the Père Lachaise cemetery (FOREVER) while simultaneously sculpting pointed, poetic countercurrents that touch on politics, personal struggles, and the beauties and horrors of being alive at specific moments in human history.”
– Keith Uhlich, Slant

“[A] sweeping real-world thriller whose aftershocks are still being felt today.”
– Jordan Mintzer, The Hollywood Reporter

“A scary and riveting portrait of Russia’s last independent news channel.”
– Lauren Wissot, IndieWire