Movie review: Transnistra an elaborate postcard from an unknown tonårsvärld

Transnistria is a region which after the collapse of the Soviet union touted itself as a separate republic, one can read in an Encyclopedia. The status of this little nationsbildning with around 500,000 inhabitants – broke away from the republic of Moldova is under negotiation.

This is the documentary filmmaker Anna Eborn found a small group of adolescents in the upper adolescence. It is four, five boys, and so Tanya. She is the hub; energetic, courted, desired. Friends to pass time on a river, bathes, rests in the grass, begging cigarettes off each other, tease and wrestle.

Read more: Anna Eborn interviewed about his new film

in a dilapidated building, ”the factory”. All the time feels charging around Tanya. She lets it be unclear who, if anyone, who is her boyfriend, so the interest in this question goes out never.

It is not young people who have it easy. It is poor. Tanya has scars on her arms, she cuts herself. Nonetheless, ”Transnistra” like a postcard from an impressionist who, while seeing all of this, but also see young people make the most of what they have: the water's edge with its soft grass, the fields, the high sky, the long days, each other.

From the ”Transnistra”. Photo: People's Bio

There is a kinship with the French film – and French painting and photography – tradition of depicting the excursion to the country, to paraphrase the title of a wonderful short film by Jean Renoir, as a valve for those who have very little money for luxuries.

the Photographer Virginie Surdej shooting on analog 16 mm film. The colors become milder, warmer than one is accustomed to. It is like browsing a photo album from the 1960-70s. Eborn-Surdej is not afraid to let it be much of the landscape and the little man.

a schoolboy who hanged herself speaking, as speaking, to be seen in the distance, passing under a large tree that bends down and out over the river. Tanya lifts: we get a picture of a road lined with trees, and so stretched an arm with a bracelet with floral decoration into the picture close to the camera, so that the uppspretande the thumb puts an end to the road. ”Visually is the 'Suffer' a real work of art,” wrote Helena Lindblad if Eborn-Surdejs documentary about the geriatric Suffer in Ukraine (DN 29/3 2018), and the same goes for ”Transnistra”.

You can still be somewhat restless during the mission in Transnistria. The images are completely uncommented. Sometimes they had wanted to have more of the director's company. It is beautiful, it is atmospheric, but it has its sides to be at the mercy of a bunch of teenagers, who do not manage to fill every minute of their days with meaning.

See more. Three other images of childhood, ”Between the walls” (2002), ”Stories we tell” (2013) and ”The Wolfpack” (2015).

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