Terra incognita

A short pseudo-documentary about a fictional physicist, Igor Leschenko, who was trying to invent anti-gravity in the 1920's or so. After many failures he went on a journey to far north, to the fictional island of Nanopolis, that supposedly was the only place on earth where anti-gravity (or zero-gravity) existed. He traveled through many intriguingly named places and finally reached Nanopolis. But did he find what he was looking for?

This film consists mainly of black-and-white mock-up news reports following Leschenkos travels while a narrator explains what happened to him. But in the beginning and in the end we also meet a man that says that Leschenko is somehow "inside his head". This brings another - unexplainable, maybe psychological - facet to this fantasy. To me, this facet seems actually like an unnecessary add-on, the story would be satisfactory without it. But probably I didn't understand its purpose.

The film is very well done but of course you don't for second believe that it is true. Everybody knows that there is no anti-gravity and even if there were, why would it only be found on a specific island in Siberia? But you should just go along with this film, pretending to believe it, pretending to be in the 1920's when scientific knowledge was maybe not so solid, when there still were unexplored places on earth, when traveling by sea was slow and dangerous.