season of dying water [tарыҥ] (2022) — svetlana romanova, chelsea tuggle + letter from siberia (1957) — chris marker

siberia/france, dcp, 63 + 62 mins.

Shot in and around the remote Yakutsk region of Siberia, Svetlana Romanova and Chelsea Tuggle’s tарыҥ (Season of Dying Water) wrestles with the complex realities of a people and place facing continual, rapid transformation under Russia’s drive for resource extraction. Some 65 years earlier, Chris Marker’s essayistic short film Letter from Siberia examined the same region during a different era of Soviet colonial expansion. As a pair, the films speak to each other, with Romanova and Tuggle’s film operating as a kind of letter back to Marker.