I have seen some more 2025 movies since I put out my 10 best list. Only one of them cracks my top 10 — a 5 1/2 hour documentary by Julia Loktev called “My Undesirable Friends, Part One.” Yes, it’s 5 1/2 hours and the movie isn’t even over yet.

So why did I watch this movie, never mind rate it so highly? Well, as a voter in the Independent Spirit Awards, I have access to their awards screener portal. Every movie nominated for an Independent Spirit Award is available for me to stream for free. By the way, they have an International Film category, so I have the opportunity to screen “The Secret Agent” again while it’s still in theaters.

But anyway, “My Undesirable Friends, Part One” is up for Best Documentary, and has also made the Academy Awards 15 movie shortlist, so I was eager to see it. In its quiet, unassuming way, the movie’s riveting.

It’s about a group of young women — all of them between the ages of 23 and 35 — who work in Moscow as independent journalists. Or, at least they did before the invasion of Ukraine. There are a lot of things about the movie that I found fascinating. First is just how similar these young women are to young women anywhere.

They have numerous Harry Potter discussions. They’re social media obsessed. They go to movies, hang out at friends’ houses and make many, many meals across the span of the film. And they also go to work trying to report on daily life in Moscow, despite being labeled “foreign agents” and having to declare themselves as such before every broadcast.

The women come across as unheroic, intelligent, sweet people who care about the truth and their profession, and are willing to make very little money and put up with constant harassment to do it. You can tell that all of them have been influenced by Navalny and aspire to make similar content as he did. And bear in mind that when the action of this movie took place, Navalny was still alive.

The final hour of the documentary is the most intense. The Ukraine War breaks out and the Russian tactics towards public dissent and media coverage grows harsher by the day. They all talk about leaving … then make plans to leave … then have their TV station shut down … then hear rumors of a raid … and then they all leave. All of them. Every character followed in this sprawling epic of contemporary Moscow life finds a way out.

Nearly 1 million Russians have left the country since the start of the Ukraine War. When you add in hundreds of thousands more young people who have died in the war, you see the devastating generational impact of this entirely unnecessary war.

Vladimir Putin likely does not care. Young people weren’t on his side anyway. Russia has a history of shrugging at massive losses of life.

But in an age where people seem to be divided more by time than by geography, this war has clearly damaged the future of Russia, a country that already was little more than a war machine and a gas station. Even if Putin were to die today, is there any good reason for these young people to return? Is there a genuine economy for them to enter?

The second part of the documentary will follow these young women in exile. I look forward to seeing it, whenever it comes out.