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Salomé Lamas’ Extinction opens with a face looking directly at the screen. Shot in grainy black and white, the close-up composition immediately recalls her 2012 film No Man’s Land, in which a man faces the camera and describes the atrocities of his life. Though it also features interviews (alongside essayistic monologues, recorded conversations, archive audio, and other verbal digressions), Extinction immediately veers away from this simple setup, sprawling omnidirectionally to become larger and more complex. More than just one man’s testimony, it is an exploration – an excavation even – of nationhood and identity.