Anna Nemzer, former journalist at exiled Russian news network TV Rain, offered a word of warning today — don’t ignore “unpleasant” political signs. That comes from someone with firsthand knowledge of the aftershocks.
“All countries are different, and we have a lot of countries under dictatorships, under authoritarian regimes. But we also have democratic countries with very unpleasant signs. And if we can share something of our experience, it would be don’t ignore unpleasant signs — they definitely become something more important and bigger than just signs. It won’t pass,” she said after American filmmaker Julia Loktev’s multi-part documentary My Undesirable Friends: The Last Air In Moscow screened for press at the New York Film Festival ahead of its official world premiere.
The doc follows a group of young journalists, mostly women, reporting writing, producing and delivering the news as the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin grows increasingly repressive, slapping a “foreign agent” (or “undesirable”) designation on outlets the reported the actual news, like Rain. The designation, a required scroll under any broadcast or digital content, was met with black humor by the staff of Rain’s popular newscasts. Police activity ramped up arrests, and this was all before Putin invaded Ukraine and protests really exploded.
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Loktev said she was drawn to the story as “a lot of media had started to be named foreign agents. TV Rain had already been named a foreign agent. And I remember, we said, ‘Let’s make a film about this. People are starting to be singled out. For me, the idea of a society starting to force people to mark themselves, obviously, there’s, you know, historic precedent of this … not belonging, not one of us.”
“Obviously, we didn’t know what this would lead to,” she said. “I think when I was filming it, everybody had a sense that things were going to get worse. Everyone was trying to figure out, how long can I keep working here in this country? How long can I stay and fight here? What they didn’t expect is that the monster would invade the neighboring country, Ukraine.”
The noose around a free press tightened. It became illegal to call the Ukraine situation anything but a “special operation” — not an invasion, attack or war. Rain held on for weeks but was eventually declared a criminal organization. The Netherlands granted it a broadcast license and it moved what was left of its operations to Amsterdam.
Rain’s young staff stay until authorities are almost upon them to the doc’s last scene, where they are making plans to quickly flee the country. One million people have left Russia since then.
Nemzer appeared with former colleagues Olga Churakova, one of the first to be named a foreign agent, and Ksenia Mironova, whose fiancee was arrested for treason and sentenced to 22 years in prison, at the Q&A with Loktev after the documentary, which is told in chapters – about five hours with a break between Chapters 1-3 and Chapters 4-5.
Nemzer, who now lives in New York “saving and preserving” the archives of Russian media, Russian NGOs and human rights organizations, said that what shocked her back in Russia wasn’t just Putin but the support he enjoyed from a segment of the population.
Here also, she said “part of your country knows that and supports Ukraine, and I don’t need to persuade them, and I don’t need to, like present them something. We are already on the same page. And here we go with the situation of polarization of the country, of dividing it in two parts. And we are familiar with the situation, and we are familiar with the feeling that you don’t know part of your country and your country can, like, attack you from your backyard all of a sudden, and you don’t know these people, and you don’t understand how it’s possible. And even if you try … to feel for them, you still you don’t succeed, and it is dangerous.”
“You know, we probably all know, people who cavalierly say, ‘If Trump gets elected again, I’m leaving the country.’ And what does that mean? Do you just like leave the country and leave it to them? What are you supposed to do, at what point? … You know, we speak about leaving the country as something like … like a great thing to do. It’s not.”
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