Pegij Pyos Begushchij Krayem Morya

The first hour of the film is made like a documentary of rural life in an Eskimo-like community on the northern Siberian coast. The other part of the film is a slowly progressive drama about a boy, his father and two other men going out for a boat trip to hunt some seals on a remote island off the coast. They are travelling in a handmade wooden boat, with only the sky to navigate from. After a successful hunting they head back for the village. However they are surprised by bad weather and are swept into a heavy fog that will last for days. With nothing to eat and the water supply running out, the men are starting to sacrifice themselves one by one for the little boy. This is a slow film, with almost no dialogue, but this is a unique piece of authentic social anthropology. Of course it is also a nice coming of age portrait about the boy. The film was made in 1990, an the director is Karen Gevorkian.

        

Inside out: Portraits of children

This a complementary (rather short) documentary included in the ”Little Fugitive”-DVD I got, made by the same director, Joanna Lipper. The film presents the portraits of some children, boys and girls, roughly about 10-13 years old. They present themselves, and then talks about their lives, their dreams and goals in life and other things. It´s decently done, but was a bit slow and very conventional and a bit boring to watch. It caught my interest a few times though. If you compare to other documentaries, I would rather recommend for example ”Boy of Baghdad” or ”Chippendiddys”. Here are a few screenshots.