Name: Belyy yagel
Genre: Drama
Duration: 1 h 40 min
Rating: 7.3
Cast: Pyotr Basnaev, Erzhena Buyantueva, Seseg Khapsasova

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.

Russian cinema is distinguished by its epic scale, philosophical depth, and innovative visual language. It often explores history, ideology, and the human psyche, with a tradition of psychological realism and artistic experimentation. Russian cinema contributed revolutionary theories of editing and later a spiritual approach to film language. It remains known for combining formal experimentation with profound explorations of endurance and belief.

Nikolay Grinko, Aleksandr Kaydanovskiy, and Anatoliy Solonitsyn in Stalker (1979)

The drama genre is a broad category that features stories portraying human experiences, emotions, conflicts, and relationships in a realistic and emotionally impactful way. Dramas delve into the complexities of human life, often exploring themes of love, loss, morality, societal issues, personal growth, with the aim to evoke an emotional response from the audience by presenting relatable and thought-provoking stories.

Mahershala Ali and Alex R. Hibbert in Moonlight (2016)

The film centers on the story of a young married Nenets, who loves a girl, to go to the regional center to learn, but in the struggle between love and way of life prevails last, and he is forced to accept, taking another wife to preserve this way of life and procreation. But, in fact, our film is about LOVE! Oh sure, anguish, jealousy ... and finding love in the name of procreation.

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