Khanty-Mansiysk. Photo: Christopher SmallI am standing in Khanty-Mansiysk. Population: roughly 85,000 people. Over one and half thousand miles east of Moscow. I have never before set foot in Russia, least of all a region as remote as the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Ogrug, of which the snow-blanketed town of Khanty-Mansiysk is the administrative center. So, why am I here, in this region the size and breadth of France yet virtually unknown in the West? Improbably, the rather modest oil town at its center has played host to a notable film festival, the Spirit of Fire, acclaimed within the country and virtually unknown outside it, for the past seventeen years; I am, perhaps equally improbably, its guest. The light in a place like this will startle even the hardiest and most sleep deprived of festival delegates. When it first appears, it has the reddish quality of an apocalyptic nuclear flare. Then, rising from behind...
- 4/30/2019
- MUBI
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