Territories

Born of a project (Cinetrain) that brought together twenty young filmmakers who travelled across Russia from Moscow to Vladivostok questioning the limits of Europe, Territories takes place in 3rd class compartment of the famous Trans-Siberian train, where Russians from all walks of life "come together like one big family" says Ocman, who is traveling from Chechnya, his native region where he has spent his vacations, to Irkutsk, where he works. This is also where Grisha, a Muscovite who has been serving in a unit of the Russian army based on the Chechen border, is traveling to. Two people who differ in every respect but are unwittingly united by a territory where "war has become a way of life" and where people use weapons "as readily as mobile phones". With a camera shaken by the movements of the train, Mónica Baptista listens to two incompatible visions of borders in what has become the former Soviet empire. Thus we note that from the Russian point of view, Chechenya is a land inhabited by savages who must be kept under control…therefore all possibility of a dialogue, as suggested by the sequence in which Grisha and Ocman share the same space while smoking a cigarette without exchanging a word, or a gaze, except when looking at the camera, bears witness to unavoidable separation. (Emmanuel Chicon, in Visions du réel)