Meryl Streep on Nov. 1 hosted a special screening of ‘My Undesirable Friends: Part II – Exile’ at New York City’s Film Forum.
Screenings of Chapters One to Three were introduced by the Oscar winner, who serves as the series’ executive producer alongside Laura Poitras. Standing alongside here were filmmaker Julia Loktev and protagonists Ksenia Mironova and Elena Kostyuchenko.
“I am honored to be here with this group of women who are so intrepid and such an inspiration,” Streep told the audience.
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Later in the day a screening of Chapters Four to Five were played with a special panel moderated by Kirsten Johnson.
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My Undesirable Friends: Part II – Exile is the follow up to the critically acclaimed My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow, MY which in 2025 won the Gotham Award, and the New York Film Critics Circle, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, National Society of Film Critics awards for Best Documentary/Non-Fiction, was nominated for a Spirit Award and Shortlisted for the Oscars. It was on the Top 10 Films of the Year lists at The New York Times, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, NPR’s Fresh Air and Slate.
(Courtesy – My Undesirable Friends Exile)
The series focuses on a group of young journalists in a synopsis that states: who flee Moscow when Russia invades Ukraine and shuts down all independent media, turning telling the truth into a crime. Just days before, they were working as part of a vibrant opposition community.
Now they’re part of a historic exodus. They leave with a few hours’ notice, carry-on suitcases, and no idea what country they can go to next that will let them stay and keep working. They must quickly get back on their feet to report on the biggest story of their lives, a war they all fiercely oppose. Intimate and immersive, the film sweeps across four years and a dozen countries. The complex, razor sharp and often very funny women — and a few men — gather in apartments that feel like waystations and borrowed offices before being uprooted yet again.
They work to bring Russians an alternative to propaganda, speaking out against their country
’s war crimes and wrestling with personal moral accountability, even as Russia menaces them with criminal prosecution back home and physical threats abroad. Relying on dark humor to get through dark times, they keep working for the uncertain future of a country they may not return to for decades. As the years pass in exile, they have to redefine what work, family, friendship, love and home mean when you can’t go home.
