In Aleksandr Molochnikov’s Extremist, an artist in Moscow places anti-war messages on supermarket price labels and is swiftly apprehended. She soon comes to see her that her small act of defiance will be used to set a terrifying example of how dissent can be punished.
Awards Buzz spoke with Molochnikov about the real-life inspiration of activist Sasha Skochilenko and what was important for him to preserve in his film. He shared the experience of shooting in a courtroom that actually felt too comfortable:
“I was just looking at the behind the scenes yesterday. I got a whole bunch of that footage, and I can see that, as I go through the playback, I almost have some tears in my eyes because we’ve been through those courts. My friends were arrested. I didn’t know Sasha personally, but my other friends were arrested. A big director, Kirill Serebrennikov, was under home arrest. We went to his courts to support him. Other people of my age were also arrested for protests. The smell of those courtrooms and how people behave there, once we filled it up and it became real, we were filming in Riga in Latvia, so it was a little hard to put together people who look Russian, all those cops, all the details that are in court, because we were filming in a Latvian court. We had to make a Russian court. The great designer, Vlad Ogay, and everybody put that all together. I remember the shot where she walks in the corridor, and I have that footage of how I gave some notes to the extras, and then they start behaving so real. I had a kind of déjà vu, remembering those corridors with those people waiting for somebody to be led through by three cops handcuffed, and it’s just some innocent young person who went to protest, or Sasha who changed price tags, and it’s heartbreaking.”
Watch the video above to hear how the film has been received around the globe and what Molochnikov plans to do next.
Extremist is on the Oscar shortlist for Best Live Action Short and available to watch above via The New Yorker.
