For thousands of years, the Nenet have travelled with their reindeer over the boundless spaces of the tundra. The reindeer represent everything for the Nenet: the meat they eat, the blood they drink, the skins they use to cover themselves and to build their safe shelters. The Nenet are one of the last nomadic people of Siberia and after the hard years of the Soviet regime they now have to face a new enemy: gas. The tundra has become a source of immense wealth and for this reason extraction wells have been drilled and gas pipes installed on the lands which used to be pastures. Eloise Barbieri spent a month with them and participated in part of the spring transhumance: from the South lands around the town of Nadym until the village of Yar-Sale in the
Yamal peninsula. This film is the story of a wonderful ancient ritual and the tale of this community made from the perspective of a Western woman.
Director
Eloise Barbieri
Eloise Barbieri is an amateur mountaineer and traveller shooting films during her personal travels. By choice she often travels alone, so that she can integrate in a community and share moments of their real everyday life. She walked across part of Tibet by herself, went up the river Tchadar with the monks in winter, travelled in Dolpo following the salt caravans and took other journeys in South America. She climbed two eight-thousands, “but easy ones” according to her.