L’appel de la toundra

A Chukchi family seeks a way between nomadism and modernity. This film was made during autumn 2000, in northeastern Yakutia, not far from the mouth of the Kolyma river, where a family group of reindeer herders tries to find an original way to live autonomously. The films shows the members of this community in the three places where they live and operate: in the tundra, where part of this group takes care of the prosperity of some 2,000 reindeers, thus perpetuating a nomadic way of life and preserving most of the traditional techniques of herding; on the bank of the river, where two members of the group devote themselves to fishing; and in a further southern location, where the family group has established a permanent base : this is where the two ancestors, Egor and Akoulina, intend to accommodate their relatives in order to pass down to the youngsters a cultural heritage that is more and more threatened.