We’re proud to be part of a community of websites that has awarded Julia Loktev’s gorgeous “My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow” with the 2025 IFSN Advocate Award. Different movies cited as important ones of 2025 embody “Cutting Through Rocks,” “Familiar Touch,” “The Perfect Neighbor,” “Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk,” and “The Voice of Hind Rajab.” Please see the official press launch under:
Indie Movie Website Community (IFSN) has introduced Julia Loktev’s My Undesirable Mates: Half I – Final Air in Moscow because the recipient of the 2025 IFSN Advocate Award. The award was established in 2022 to focus on unbiased movies annually that illuminate a humanitarian concern with a singular creative imaginative and prescient. The highest prize is awarded a million (1M) media impressions throughout the Indie Film Site Network, which represents The Film Stage, Hammer to Nail, IONCINEMA.com, Next Best Picture, RogerEbert.com, and Slant Magazine. Letterboxd can also be contributing to the award.
Finalists for the 2025 IFSN Advocate Award are Sara Khaki and Mohammad Reza Eyni’s Slicing Via Rocks, Sarah Friedland’s Acquainted Contact, Geeta Gandbhir’s The Good Neighbor, Sepideh Farsi’s Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Stroll, and Kaouther Ben Hania’s The Voice of Hind Rajab, which is able to every be awarded 100K media impressions throughout IFSN.
Soviet-born American filmmaker Julia Loktev (The Loneliest Planet, Day Evening Day Evening) got here to Moscow in 2021 to make a movie about unbiased journalists being declared “international brokers” by Putin’s regime—because it seems, simply 4 months earlier than Russia began a full-scale battle in Ukraine. Along with her good friend Anna Nemzer, a chat present host at TV Rain, Russia’s final remaining unbiased information channel, Loktev brings us right into a group of sharp, heat, and humorous younger ladies talking reality to energy as they face growing threats. Loktev filmed in Moscow through the first week of the full-scale invasion, because the journalists tried to counter Russian propaganda and report the reality on the battle, till all unbiased media had been shut down and so they had been pressured to flee the nation. Structured in 5 chapters, feeling like a cross between a Russian novel and a actuality present about frighteningly actual actuality, Loktev’s movie is a unprecedented historic file of a rustic on the verge of fascism and an immersive and intimate inside view of the opposition in an authoritarian society, which turns into all of the extra globally related every single day.
“That is such an honor. The way in which audiences are experiencing this movie has modified a lot over the previous months,” stated Julia Loktev. “It’s gone from being a movie about journalists combating an authoritarian regime in a distant place, to hitting very near residence within the U.S. Individuals preserve telling me the movie has helped them course of the present second, which can also be a type of advocacy—a reminder to not ignore the warning indicators and, hopefully, an inspiration to maintain combating even when the combat generally really feel misplaced.”
“Because the very important proper of the liberty of press continues to be eroded internationally, Julia Loktev’s My Undesirable Mates: Half I – Final Air in Moscow intimately and exhaustively captures the Putin regime’s calculated dismantling of what must be a common certainty,” stated Jordan Raup, co-founder of IFSN and editor-in-chief and co-founder of The Movie Stage. “In presenting the IFSN Advocate Award to Loktev, we additionally wish to commend the braveness of the movie’s topics––Anna Nemzer, Ksenia Mironova, Sonya Groysman, Olga Churakova, Irina Dolinina––for steadfastly reporting amidst the specter of speedy hazard. We sincerely hope a U.S. distributor comes aboard to introduce this important documentary to a wider viewers.”
My Undesirable Mates: Half I – Final Air in Moscow premiered on the 2024 New York Movie Pageant, and subsequently performed at Berlin Worldwide Movie Pageant, IDFA Better of Fests, Thessaloniki Documentary Pageant, Visions du Réel Movie Pageant, and Karlovy Fluctuate Worldwide Movie Pageant, amongst others. It obtained a U.S. qualifying run in August at Movie Discussion board and is at present looking for U.S. distribution.
The IFSN Advocate Award, created by the community as a part of its mission to rejoice and help indie movie, is chosen by a jury of writers and editors from IFSN websites, with every website nominating a finalist and deliberating to award a winner. Earlier IFSN Advocate Award winners embody Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, and Rachel Szor’s No Different Land, D. Smith’s Kokomo Metropolis, and Shaunak Sen’s All That Breathes.
About Indie Movie Website Community
Indie Movie Website Community (IFSN) is a collaboration between well-respected media shops protecting essentially the most important developments in unbiased and worldwide 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 help movie criticism and foster an ever-growing group of indie movie lovers. For extra info, go to indiefilmsitenetwork.com. For gross sales and partnership inquiries, contact sales@3rdimpression.com.
