Filmmaker Anastasia Lupsui, a Nenet who hails from the Russian tundra, has combined Nenet legends with her personal experiences to portray the life of her people under the communist regime. Unfolding in seven separate stories or songs, this exquisite film offers an impressionist view of an ancient culture caught between their traditions and legends and the threat of the modern world and its politics. Behind the film s mythic allusions is a story of resistance...a story about people fighting to preserve their identity.

Markku Lehmuskallio has devoted a large part of his documentary work to the indigenous people of the Arctic Circle. In this latest film, co-directed with his son Johannes Lehmuskallio, he composes a fascinating poetic ethnography inspired by the singing, dancing, forms of contemporary existence and, above all, the vital breath of these nomad communities mistreated by History.

2015 film