Zdeněk Blaha from the Insti­tute of Doc­u­ment­ary Film had a chance to talk with Michał Mar­czak about the unique remote world “at the edge of Russia”.

“At the Edge of Rus­sia” is a story about Alexei – a nine­teen year old recruit being flown in to per­form his mil­it­ary ser­vice on the fron­tier of north­ern Rus­sia. The base is one of few such remain­ing out­posts on the Arc­tic Ocean. There are five other seasoned and long serving sol­diers sta­tioned here, each with their own per­sonal story or secret that has caused them to retreat from the real world. Their train­ing and break­ing in of the new arrival is some­times humor­ous, at times harsh. Gradu­ally, they each reveal some­thing of them­selves in their daily inter­ac­tions and private moments as they con­tinue their absurd duty in this snow covered no man’s land, hun­dreds of miles from the nearest human set­tle­ment.


Zdeněk Blaha had a chance to talk with Michał Mar­czak about the unique remote world “at the edge of Rus­sia”.



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When I first saw your film, I imme­di­ately remembered „How I Ended This Sum­mer” by Alexei Popo­greb­ski. I think „At the Edge of Rus­sia” must be com­pared to this film very often, isn’t it? Sim­ilar place, char­ac­ters, also the rela­tion­ship between the young cadets and the old sol­diers…

Michał Mar­czak: I often receive that com­ment. We shot “At the Edge of Rus­sia” in the winter of 2008, before “How I Ended This Sum­mer” came out. The first time I heard of this film was dur­ing the Ber­linale, but I still have not seen it. It’s always inter­est­ing to watch how people inter­pret sim­ilar sub­ject mat­ter, if it’s done in a per­sonal and sub­ject­ive way redund­ancy should not be feared.


Did you know Alexei — the young sol­dier — before, or it was just a good coin­cid­ence to start shoot­ing with his arrival to the sta­tion?

M. M.: From the very begin­ning I planned to start shoot­ing in the heli­copter to build a mys­tery of the des­tin­a­tion and place of the action. I needed someone with a strong cam­era pres­ence to ini­ti­ate the story and guide the view­ers through the base and other sol­diers. We meet many young recruits and with the sup­port of the Army offi­cials chose Alexei. It was appar­ent that he’s our man although we only tested him with a small handy cam for about half an hour.


Was it hard to get per­mis­sion to shoot at this sta­tion? Well, after all it is still a mil­it­ary out­post.

M. M.: It was treach­er­ous, illo­gical and took over a year , but at the same time it was fas­cin­at­ing to have the pos­sib­il­ity to delve and develop a deep under­stand­ing of the cur­rent state of Rus­sian polit­ics and inner work­ings of the gov­ern­ment.


How many days you stay there for film­ing and how big was your crew?

M. M.: The crew con­sisted of five people: The cine­ma­to­grapher, sound­man, cam­era assist­ant (we shot about half of the film in super 16mm), director’s assist­ant /​trans­lator and I. We shot as a full crew for almost two months, and then I stayed alone for another month and a half.


I am ask­ing, because the sta­tion look as very small place to live and that could bring some prob­lems between the inhab­it­ants – some ten­sions are also evid­ent in the film, when Valerij bursts with anger. How did the other sol­diers accept you? After all, you came there to shot a film and that could be quite an inter­ven­tion into their small private space.

M. M.: It was an inter­est­ing cul­ture jam. The begin­nings are always dif­fi­cult, this one espe­cially. The main prob­lem was not of the con­fined space, which we adap­ted to very quickly but of the prot­ag­on­ists need to talk to the cam­era. To get cer­tain inform­a­tion out, which they wanted the world to hear, inform­a­tion, which was too redund­ant, too straight­for­ward, touch­ing on sub­jects, which should be shown and not neces­sar­ily talked about. It took us over a week of non-​stop pre­tend shoot­ing to get the sol­diers to act nat­ural in front of the cam­era.


As I under­stand from the film, Alexei will stay there for at least one and half year, but how long are the oth­ers there?

M. M.: That’s a tricky ques­tion. There are only a couple of these bases left. The gov­ern­ment decided to close them as soon as they have avail­able means to send the sol­diers of to retire­ment. Usu­ally they would be there between two to six years.


This sta­tion on the far north could evoke some sort of pun­ish­ment, kind of an exile. What are the stor­ies behind the other soldier’s lives? Were they relo­cated there for some spe­cific dis­cip­lin­ary reason?

M. M.: The funny and most fas­cin­at­ing insight into these bases was that they seem to have always housed some of the most intel­li­gent sol­diers of the time. In the old days they were sent there as a form of pun­ish­ment or as a pre­cau­tion­ary means to keep the most for­ward think­ing people in a place where there is not much they can do to inspire oth­ers. In today’s world, it’s their choice. The older sol­diers are con­tract based. They can choose where and for how long they want to go. This is what the film is partly about, to give the viewer a hint of the reason behind their decision, but not to say it straight out. I wanted the audi­ence to fill in the gaps. To have them invest some energy in to sup­ple­ment­ing of the story. This is one of my prob­lems with today’s doc­u­ment­ary cinema in gen­eral. It’s too con­crete. Too many people seem to exactly know where the prob­lem or solu­tion lies. Films have become illus­tra­tions of pre­con­ceived con­cepts with little space left for the audi­ence, or real­ity because once you try to cap­ture it you lose it.


At the moment you are very busy with shoot­ing a new film. Could you describe a bit your new pro­ject?

M. M.: I am actu­ally work­ing on three new pro­jects. Two are doc­u­ment­ar­ies, the last one is a fea­ture film which I have recently fin­ished writ­ing. The first one called Fuck For Forest (work­ing title) fol­lows the lives of three eco-​porno act­iv­ists which save the forests in Latin Amer­ica, buy buy­ing massive amounts of land and giv­ing them back to the local pop­u­la­tions with the excep­tion that no trees are to be cut. The fund­ing comes from their por­no­graphic web­site. The second one is about a priest who at the age of thirty-​seven fell in love with a girl from a high school in which he was teach­ing reli­gion. He robbed a bank to have the means to start a new life with her, but was caught half an hour later and is now serving a three-​year sen­tence. I am fol­low­ing him from the first day after cap­ture and will con­tinue until he gets released. The fea­ture is about a per­verse game between a son, father and his women. It has a doc­u­ment­ary part, which I will start film­ing this Novem­ber and con­tinue for a year when prin­cipal pho­to­graphy will com­mence.



The inter­view is avail­able on the web­site of the Insti­tute of Doc­u­ment­ary Film (click here).


(05.07.2011)