My Undesirable Friends Film Screening and Discussion with Kseniia Mironova

Monday, October 27, 2025

5:30 pm – 7:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 

Bertelsmann Campus Center, Weis Cinema

“First they came for the journalists, we don't know what happened after that," is an ominous forewarning of a regime rapidly descending into a state of total authoritarianism and unfreedom, the kind of reality that does not need to be explained to Russian independent journalists. The film My Undesirable Friends by Julia Loktev acutely captures the escalating political momentum in 2021 with increasing state persecution of voices critical of the government, which preceded Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

In tandem with the project Russian Independent Media Archive (RIMA), founded in 2022 to preserve independent journalism stifled under the Foreign Agent law, we invite you to the screening of fragments of the film to discuss ways in which media and digital initiatives continue to resist authoritarianism and the erasure of dissent.

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For more information, call 845-330-9149, or e-mail [email protected]