Tanya Mosley

There's nothing to do but laugh to keep from crying.

There's this sequence that you feature in the film, My Undesirable Friends, right after, I think it was like around February, end of February of 2022.

So Russia invades Ukraine.

And there's this sequence at TV Rain in those first few days where...

the journalists that you're following are watching the news hit in ways because this is the time period when Western companies then start pulling out one after the other.

So there are no Apple stores, no more Nike, no more Ikea.

And then they realize that they have to leave as well.

And you kept those cameras rolling.

How did that feel in the moment when you started to see these bigger institutions say, it's time for us to leave as well?

We see all of the old architecture.

We don't.

This film was your way of doing something, and it's a film about Russia, but it also makes the viewer ask, what does it mean to be the opposition under a government that you oppose?

What is your role?

What can you do?

And I want to know, what do you tell Americans when they ask you this question?

Julia Lochtev, thank you so much for this documentary and for this conversation.

Julia Lochtev's film is My Undesirable Friends, Part One, Last Air in Moscow.

Coming up, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Heather Ann Thompson talks about her latest book, Fear and Fury, the Reagan 80s, the Bernie Getz shootings, and the rebirth of white rage.

This is Fresh Air Weekend.

Historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Heather Ann Thompson has written a new book that explores fear, how it has become one of the most powerful forces in American life, powerful enough to excuse violence, shape policy, and decide whose lives matter.