Belyy yagel

A story among the Nenets, an ethnic group native to Siberia. They are nomads, live in an extreme environment in the Yamal peninsula on the Kara sea (winter temperatures reach - 50C) and depend on reindeer herds for food, clothing and transportation. They own some modernities like radios, a few snowmobiles and the occasional cell phone but mostly they live like their ancestors did for centuries.

The movie begins at the onset of the long winter; the reindeer are digging up under the snow the white moss of the title which is their sustenance. Children and adolescents are being collected and shipped by helicopter to a nearby city to attend school during the cold season. We learn that some of these children will not want to return after their taste of city life. The Nenets speak their own language, in which Yamal means "the end of the world". Those with schooling know Russian as well.

The script is based on two stories of Anna Nerkagi, a writer, novelist and social activist born in the Yamal peninsula in 1952. The subject is that of confrontation between dreams and harsh reality. Director Vladimir Tumaev and cinematographer Dmitriy Kuvshinov capture everyday happenings and age-old rituals in the great conical tents of the Nenets as well as the eerie beauty of the landscape. Under a leaden grey sky and a cover of snow, the tundra and frozen lakes combine into a vast plain only broken by shrubs and denuded forests. At night, wolves roam at will, star clusters fuse into almost solid patches of white light in the skies and the aurora borealis makes its majestic appearances. A movie to watch.