Immortal, Ksenia Okhapkina, Estonia / Latvia 2019, 61 min., Russian with English subtitles
Ksenia Okhapkina’s observational study focuses on Apatity, an industrial town in northwestern Russia that was originally built as a Soviet-era forced-labour camp. Apatity echoes the numbness that characterises the young faces in the forced spectacle of marching and dancing, performing inherited rituals that defined the community’s existence following the fall of the Soviet Union. Surrounded by a landscape in a state of almost permanent hibernation, bodies and shapes enact a never-ending repetition of formulaic forms of alienation, pieces of a still-existent state machine.
The screening is followed by a live Q&A with director Ksenia Okhapkina, hosted by Festival curator Nico Marzano on 29 November. You can join this event for free at 5:15pm GMT
here.
