Seven Songs from the Tundra (Seitsemän Laulua Tundralita)

Story:
This is a Finnish film directed by Anastasia Lapsui and Markku Lehmuskallio. It is mostly fictional and tells the story of the indigenous normadic people of the Russian tundra during Stalin’s days and then during Communist rule. How they struggle to hold on to their age-old lifestyle.

It is the first feature film in the Nenets language. The screenplay was written by a native Nenets. The Nenets have no professional actors, just common people, nomads, hunters and fishers. In the film Nenets are played by Neneths, the teacher appears as a teacher, the hunter as a hunter, they all appear as themselves.

The film has won several major international awards

“Grand Prix du Jury – Meilleur Long Métrage Fiction”
International Film Festival in Créteil, France
“Nordic Amanda Award – Best Feature Film”
Haugesund, Norway
“Best European Feature Film Made in a Lesser Language”
Festival de cinéma de Douarnenez , France
The French Press Prize 2001.
800,000 FFr for press advertising for the French theatrical release.
Best film
JUSSI Statue, Finland
Best Foreign Feature Film Audience Award
Belfort International Film Festival, France

This anthology, consisting of seven short stories, takes the viewers to the isolated land of the Nenets, who live, literary, at the top of the world. Fascinating and beautifully made. It’s the small details of Nenets life, captured in grainy B&W images, that fascinate in this strangely beautiful film.
Nenets actors give natural, unforced perfs, and the direction, though extremely simple, powerfully conveys the destruction of an old-aged lifestyle by ruthless ideologues.
VARIETY