Extinction follows Kolja, a Moldovan national living in the de facto state of Transnistria, a breakaway region on the border of Moldova and Ukraine. It combines modes of the essay film, ethnographic documentary and road movie to interrogate the subject of borders.

Extinction is a film which takes a stand, and in this sense allows us to overcome many of the preconceived ideas about Eastern Europe and its recent history, which we see as entrenched in a polarity of communism and post-communism, but which is much more complex than that, and which finds its loudest expression in the divorce of politics from life.(Salomé Lamas)

This film selection is part of the film series Elsewhere, within which looks at the last decade's explorations and renewals of ethnographic filmmaking. The series includes film screenings in our cinema, films presented through our streaming platform and commissioned film essays. The project is supported by the Norwegian Film Institute.

Watch No man's land by Salomé Lamas on out Home Cinema.

Get tickets to screenings of Eldorado XXI (wed 06.09.23/ tues 12.09.23)

Read the essay by Maria Moseng about Salomé Lamas’ films (IN NORWEGIAN ONLY).

Salomé Lamas (b. 1987) is a filmmaker from Portugal. Her films challenge the lines between documentary and fiction and has a special interest in the relationship between storytelling, memories and history. Lamas explores the traumatic, repressed, unrepresented, and places or people who have become invisible in history, whether it's relating to colonial violence or landscapes that are exploited for capital gain, describing her method as modified ethnography or parafiction.

Her first feature film No Man’s Land [Terra de Ninguem] (2012) screened at several prestigious festivals such as the Berlin International Film Festival, and her shorts have been exhibited at art and film institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, TATE modern in London and the Biennal of Moving Images in Geneva.