In the late 1980s, a team of Ukrainian filmmakers undertook several film expeditions to remote areas of Siberia. Their forgotten film reels were rediscovered in Kyiv in 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

The title Where Russia Ends is derived from that recurrent Vladimir Putin line that “Russia’s border doesn’t end anywhere”. Director Radynski smartly hijacks it to explore the history of colonialism and environmental damages in Russian-occupied territories. Also a writer on decolonial debates about Russia, he uses found footage to reveal, underneath the gorgeous and mesmerising images of Baikal mountains, animals and forests, an overlooked history of indigenous people being oppressed, of collusions to exhaust shamelessly natural sources. Imperialism, whatever label you put on it, never ends.

Jury statement: A significant work of archive retrieval and restoration of collective memory, assembled with precise care, to safeguard the visibility and history of Russia’s indigenous peoples against imperialistic erasure and environmental ravages – matters of burning relevance in today’s Europe.