In a yurt on the snow-covered fields of the North, Nanook and Sedna live following the traditions of their ancestors. Alone in the wilderness, they look like the last people on Earth. When Sedna’s health deteriorates, Nanook decides to fulfill her wish. He embarks on a long journey in order to find their daughter Ága, who left the icy tundra a long time ago due to family feud.
Nanook (Mikhail Aprosimov) and Sedna (Feodosia Ivanova) live in a yurt alone in the arctic wilderness of Siberia with their sled dog. Completely disconnected from the modern world, the self-sufficient indigenous couple travels far through the deep icy snow to hunt for food, collect wood, and other supplies they need. As wildlife struggle to survive each year, animals become more scarce and they must adapt to find other resources.
One visitor named Chena (Sergei Egorov) brings them a few necessities and surprises them with the whereabouts of their daughter Ága (Galina Tikhonova) who has apparently been estranged from the family. While Nanook constantly recounts stories about seeing reindeer in the mountains, Sedna reminisces about their daughter. She mentions a beautiful hat she made for her and wants to personally give it to her one day, letting us know that whatever she did that caused the separation has now been forgiven. Sadly, Sedna falls ill and Nanook is left alone to care for himself. He decides to carry out his wife’s wish and begins his journey traveling to what seems another side of the world to find Ága. The closing scene is an emotional reuniting of father and daughter and when Ága takes one look at him, she knows that her mother has passed.
If you loved the film “Honeyland,” you are going to enjoy this as there are many similarities. The cinematography is incredible, the opening scene is absolutely breathtaking and I literally felt cold all the way down to my bones. The actors did a great job of displaying their chemistry as there wasn’t much dialogue in this film. I do, however, wish the story had been more complete. We never find out what Ága did that was so terrible that she would be blacklisted from her own family. We are just left to imagine, which really didn’t work for me.
In select theaters Wednesday, September 4th
