Knife in the Heart of Europe

Terent'ev describes his fragmentary footage as a film that ‘barely exists’. It begins in his grandmother’s flat in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. As she watches Russian propaganda news reports on the war in Ukraine in the living room, the following subtitles appear: ‘Dear viewers, I am now editing this film.’ With a tentative handheld camera, Terent’ev moves through post-Soviet landscapes to his recently deceased grandfather’s dacha. Filmed with a Blackmagic Camera and two sawn-off Soviet lenses, the result is a series of dull, desaturated low-fi images that sometimes operate on the very edge of visibility: Young people play amongst industrial ruins; at night, a barely recognisable fisherman searches for his catch; an unseen passer-by accuses Terent’ev of espionage from off-screen. Accompanied by the filmmaker’s silent voice, audible only in the subtitles, the disquiet of the present becomes visible above all in cinematic textures. (F.H.)