Dolomite and Ash

Dina is a young Russian filmmaker working on a film about Stalinist repressions and the massive intergenerational trauma they caused that continues to resonate in modern-day Russia. Together with her friend Johan, a German sound designer whose grandfather went missing in the USSR during the Second World War, she embarks on a journey to the former Soviet labour camps. Almost deserted, the abandoned lands of Gulag still bear traces of those who perished there. Although this trip becomes somewhat therapeutic for the two of them, it also puts their relationship to the test. Dolomite and Ash, a Hubert Bals Fund-supported feature and debut of Toma Selivanova, is a visceral, visually compelling insight into one of the darkest periods in 20th century Russia. The film is a semi-fictional, semi-autobiographical reflection on the Gulag’s tragic and unresolved legacy that still mainly exists in the limbo of speculation: silence and amnesia as opposed to public acknowledgement, remembrance and repentance. With uncompromising honesty and ferocious dedication, Selivanova herself plays the character of Dina, adding another layer of intimacy to this extremely timely story of the past assaulting the present and politics assaulting the most personal. (International Film Festival Rotterdam)