Based on a novel by the late Finnish writer Timo Mukka, this simple story focuses on what happens when Milka (Irma Huntus), a girl barely out of childhood, gets pregnant by Ojanen (Matti Turunen) a rustic fieldhand. Her own mother had been hoping to marry Ojanen, and her daughter's pregnancy turns...
When two former top orienteers end up in a snowstorm in Lapland wilderness, they face an impossible orienteering task: how to reach your destination when you can't tell earth from sky?
An anthology of stories about the indigenous Nenet peoples of the Northern Russian tundra, and how their way of life was disrupted by the advent of Soviet power.
The film is both a folkloric film and a social documentary about the Selkupi people who live in Siberia and make their living from hunting and fishing. The film follows the life of Yuri Mikhailovich Kalin's family, which consists of fishing, trapping fur animals, and bartering their catch for food...
I Am – A Film About the Art of People Living in the Tundra: Prehistory and Encounter
01992HD
A close and passionate look at the art of arctic peoples from the earliest findings to the beginning of the 20th century. “There are no talking heads, there is no dramatic lighting or sharp focus in these two long movies. Rather, each object is lovingly filmed, as if inviting the artwork to...
An elderly Nenets woman in teepee on northern Russia's Yamal Peninsula recounts her early life betrothed to a deity for the entertainment of a blind young girl. In the Nenets culture, a girl child can be married to holiest of holies, Num, before or after her birth. Lonely old Numd' Syarda (which...
A hunter brings a feathered bird as an offering to the goddess of his ancestors. Tapiola is a film-poem in defense of nature and humanity. It is also a documentary that tells the story of modern man's loss of contact with the environment and its transformation into a commodity.
A little Nenets girl Neko is taken against her will from her home to a boarding school in a remote Russian village. Forced to adapt to a foreign culture and new customs, Neko rebels and decides to flee, hoping to get back to her family and old habits.
In 17th-century Pohjola, young Antti Puuhaara is looking for himself, because he has grown up with no knowledge of his childhood. Two actors, the tragedian and the comedian, who were banished from Tsarist Russia to Karelia, had predicted to the crooked merchant Markki Bohattov that Antti's fate...
A waterfall, a moose, a marsh. Graceful swans, owls and woodpeckers. A change of season and, finally, the invasion of human civilization, the sound of chainsaws and gunfire. From the perspective of the animals, the film explores the ecological disaster and man's conception of nature bent to the...
In the 1860’s Alaska and Finland are simultaneously parts of the Russian Empire. A Finnish mining engineer Simon buys a Tlingit girl named Tsamo and decides to bring her to Finland. The child, Tsamo, is baptized and Simon starts to teach her European manners. Tsamo thinks she’s married to...
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...
A fertilized egg develops into a human. He is born, lives his life and eventually dies. Human life is a journey, the path we take from birth to death. The film is a story about the journey of Minja's life. At the end of the film, there is a dedication to Minja, Minja’s mother and grandmother....
With a keen sense of visual beauty, director Markku Lehmuskallio has created a thought-provoking, aesthetic film about a married couple and an old man living in a remote part of Finland. The young husband goes out hunting but only to support himself and his wife, not to kill off hordes of animals....
Based on a true story about the so called 1932 Horse Rebellion in Nivala, Finland. The decision to put down a sick horse owned by a poor farmer rises the farmers in open rebellion against the authorities.
Liisa, a young nurse returns to a remote island where she has spent the summer leaves in her youth. She soon gets to know some of the regular residents on the island, Pekka and Paula. During the summer party the underlying tensions mount.