After watching the last episode of Planet Earth II, Tamara said: “Please remind me never to go to Ethiopia”. I had similar thoughts after watching this documentary in Teatro Guiniguada, shown as a part of the new cycle, Tour D’A, by Filmoteca Canaria.
It takes a while to reach this point in the middle of taiga, hundreds of miles from the nearest village: first by boat, then by helicopter. There must be a good reason to go there, you’d think. Well... There live just two families, and they aren’t even on speaking terms. The cause of this cold war? Territory, as if there was not enough. Throughout the film, the members of one family (Braguins) explain how bad are the others (Kilins), friends with “bandits” from the unnamed “city” (I guess a village of any size must be a city compared to Braguino). We never have a chance to hear the Kilins’ point of view.
I found some scenes, for example, bear hunting, quite disturbing. Yet there is a beauty, a depressing, frightening beauty, but a beauty nonetheless, to this place. And then there are children. All the children (Nordic-looking blondes) were born there. The children of both families play on neutral ground. One day, I hope, they will leave their birthplace. One of them, the future Tarkovsky, will shoot their own Mirror where Braguino is bound to emerge as some kind of lost paradise, while the real one, for the good or the bad, will probably disappear from the face of Earth.
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