• Natasha Cica

28 April 2011Tasmania’s feel-good mood has given way to a bittersweet fight over versions of the future, writes Natasha Cica in Inside Story

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IN Aleksei Popogrebsky’s film How I Ended This Summer, screening at Hobart’s State Cinema at the moment, the lone inhabitants of a remote Russian Arctic island – Sergei and Pavel – fall out. The problem starts smallish, with a fixable and forgivable failing of moral courage on Pavel’s part. Neither man fixes or forgives, however, and they become locked in mortal combat, driven by fear and suspicion to a kind of codependent madness. The ending – involving contaminated trout, and a final Slavic embrace – is bittersweet.

It’s a timely tale for Tasmania. As our own summer ends on our own remote island, are we poised to pick new fights or revive old feuds for the long, dark nights ahead…?

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Photo: Matthew Newton