IONCINEMA.com and Indie Film Site Network partners The Film Stage, Hammer to Nail, Next Best Picture, RogerEbert.com, and Slant Magazine (plus a Letterboxd folks contribution) are extremely proud to announce that My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow is the recipient of the 2025 IFSN Advocate Award.
The award was established in 2022 to highlight independent films each year that illuminate a humanitarian issue with a singular artistic vision. The top prize is awarded one million (1M) media impressions across the the IFSN folks. Finalists for the 2025 IFSN Advocate Award are Sara Khaki and Mohammad Reza Eyni’s Cutting Through Rocks, Sarah Friedland’s Familiar Touch, Geeta Gandbhir’s The Perfect Neighbor, Sepideh Farsi’s Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, and Kaouther Ben Hania’s The Voice of Hind Rajab, which will each be awarded 100K media impressions across IFSN.
Soviet-born American filmmaker Julia Loktev (The Loneliest Planet, Day Night Day Night) came to Moscow in 2021 to make a film about independent journalists being declared “foreign agents” by Putin’s regime—as it turns out, just four months before Russia started a full-scale war in Ukraine. With her friend Anna Nemzer, a talk show host at TV Rain, Russia’s last remaining independent news channel, Loktev brings us into a community of sharp, warm and funny young women speaking truth to power as they face increasing threats. Loktev filmed in Moscow during the first week of the full-scale invasion, as the journalists tried to counter Russian propaganda and report the truth on the war, until all independent media was shut down and they were forced to flee the country. Structured in five chapters, feeling like a cross between a Russian novel and a reality show about frighteningly real reality, Loktev’s film is an extraordinary historic record of a country on the verge of fascism and an immersive and intimate inside view of the opposition in an authoritarian society, which becomes all the more globally relevant every day.
“This is such an honor. The way audiences are experiencing this film has changed so much over the past months,” said Julia Loktev. “It’s gone from being a film about journalists fighting an authoritarian regime in a far away place, to hitting very close to home in the U.S. People keep telling me the film has helped them process the current moment, which is also a form of advocacy—a reminder not to ignore the warning signs and, hopefully, an inspiration to keep fighting even when the fight sometimes feel lost.”
“As the vital right of the freedom of press continues to be eroded across the world, Julia Loktev’s My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow intimately and exhaustively captures the Putin regime’s calculated dismantling of what should be a universal certainty,” said Jordan Raup, co-founder of IFSN and editor-in-chief and co-founder of The Film Stage. “In presenting the IFSN Advocate Award to Loktev, we also want to commend the courage of the film’s subjects––Anna Nemzer, Ksenia Mironova, Sonya Groysman, Olga Churakova, Irina Dolinina––for steadfastly reporting amidst the threat of immediate danger. We sincerely hope a U.S. distributor comes aboard to introduce this essential documentary to a wider audience.”
My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow premiered at the 2024 New York Film Festival, and subsequently played at Berlin International Film Festival, IDFA Best of Fests, Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, Visions du Réel Film Festival, and Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, among others. It received a U.S. qualifying run in August at Film Forum and is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
The IFSN Advocate Award, created by the network as part of its mission to celebrate and support indie film, is selected by a jury of writers and editors from IFSN sites, with each site nominating a finalist and deliberating to award a winner. Previous IFSN Advocate Award winners include Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, and Rachel Szor’s No Other Land, D. Smith’s Kokomo City, and Shaunak Sen’s All That Breathes.
About Indie Film Site Network
Indie Film Site Network (IFSN) is a collaboration between well-respected media outlets covering the most essential developments in independent and international cinema. IFSN, which represents The Film Stage, Hammer to Nail, IONCINEMA.com, Next Best Picture, RogerEbert.com, and Slant Magazine, was created with a mission to support film criticism and foster an ever-growing community of indie film lovers. For more information, visit indiefilmsitenetwork.com. For sales and partnership inquiries, contact sales@3rdimpression.com.