There’s something curiously Tarkovskian about Salomé Lamas’ feature-length documentary. First, in its highly atmospheric cinematography and use of a stylized black and white palette, evoking the patina and texture of the Russian master’s films — even those shot in color. Then, in its shots and framing: precise yet at the same time mysterious and disorienting, suggestive of hidden worlds or suspended stories, sometimes strangely surreal. Like that shot/countershot sequence between a bearded man (a historian? a journalist?) and the film’s protagonist (a typical Transnistrian?), who remains practically silent, merely listening, amidst a structure made up of gigantic Soviet-style statues — the first man perched high above, the second seated on the ground, leaning against one of the blocks of the structure. Or that nighttime car tracking shot, suddenly interrupted by a U-turn in the middle of the road to reveal, in the beam of the headlights, what looks like a mosaic bus stop where the protagonist waits, alone in silence and darkness.

The film’s dense soundtrack blends industrial or media noise, nervy music punctuated by bursts of trumpet and shrieking violin, and occasional patriotic folk songs in the background. There are also these encounters between the protagonist and enigmatic characters straight out of fictional cinema, who recount, through metaphors, chilling fragments of the history of his ghost country and of Russia itself — like the aforementioned bearded man, or an elegant woman in a fur-collared coat and cloche hat explaining the complex web of mafias across the continent, or a man in a cap talking about the imaginary train of the Soviet leaders’ dream from Lenin onwards, with a backdrop of sunset clouds.

Extinction smartly and inventively examines, like a kaleidoscopic film noir investigation, the situation of the self-proclaimed (but internationally unrecognized) independent state of Transnistria — a borderland wedged between Moldova and Ukraine, propped up by Russia, which has stationed several thousand soldiers there. I mentioned Tarkovsky because, within the first 15 minutes, it’s hard not to think of Stalker (1979), with its talk of borders and passports, of undefined, liminal zones between recognized, more powerful states — with those images and elements described above. The blurred outlines of the protagonist Salomé Lamas chose to carry her narrative — a man with cropped hair and a neutral face — also recall the symbolic characters of Tarkovsky’s film. He crosses these borders, and the filmmaker presents his exchanges with border guards via a blue screen, shown only in subtitles since filming is prohibited at these crossings.

The only traces of pure documentary? Voice-overs: a historical narration delivered in the tone of a fairy tale, and seemingly light conversations between unidentified people reflecting on their country — sometimes over images of the protagonist, sometimes on close-ups of objects like a small cassette recorder, often over shots of the Transnistrian landscape. It’s an elegant and captivating way to tell the story of a country that exists only for its inhabitants, a mere territory for the rest of the world, haunted by the memory of Soviet order and oppression, torn between the allure of officially joining Russia and the awareness of the double-edged Soviet-Putinist legacy such a move would entail.

Claire Valade
Critic and programmer