ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that Territoriia portrays the Arctic as a site of privileged masculinity and a backdrop for celebrating homosocial masculine bonding. Aleksandr Mel’nik’s Territoriia is one of the many Russian films from the 2000s devoted to or placed in the peripheral Russian Far North. The northern wilderness becomes an agent in co-constructing the multiple masculine identities reproducing the manly history of the Arctic myth. Territoriia constructs an Arctic landscape that reproduces a particular environment of male heroism, a specific type of hegemonic masculinity that is tied to the production of space. The dark history of Soviet political violence and a realistic description of the bitter realities of physical work in the Arctic are expunged from the landscape, which pursues empowering identificatory potential. Territoriia is certainly not alone with its nostalgic turn. Located in the Arctic, nostalgia in Territoriia participates in historical myth-making and amnesia.
