Cast :
Spartak FEDOTOV (le pêcheur), Kirill SEMIONOV (Okhonoos), Domna OUÏGOUROVA (la veuve du pêcheur), Tatiana MYREÏEVA (l’épouse d’Okhonoos), Piotr SADOVNIKOV (le pêcheur en treillis), Aïta OKHLOPKOVA (fillette), Olia OKHLOPKOVA (fillette), Liza SKRYBYKINA (fillette)
Production :
VS Films
Disponible en : français, anglais, allemand, russe, polonais, portuguais, suédois, norvégien, finlandais, coréen
Language iakoute
Plot synopsis
Yakut film.
The story is simple and touching: in Sakha country, in the heart of the Siberian forest, an old fisherman lives on the shore of a forgotten lake. Fleeing from men, like a hermit, he praises the spirits every day for the food that nature gives him. One day, while he is lifting his traps, he sees the head of a man sticking out of the water. At first terrified by the sight of this severed head, he realizes that the man is alive. He decides to come to his aid…
The film touches with its sensitivity and aesthetics. Even after watching the film three times, the viewer discovers the keys to the metaphors linked to the elements of nature and skillfully mastered by the director. Asked about his passion for cinema, Viatcheslav Semionov answers:
“I was born in an Evenk village in the Aldan region of Yakutia. I became interested in images through photography: my brother had a camera and I went with him everywhere. I finished Naoumov’s film courses in Moscow. My fiction films are inspired by Yakut authors whose works I like to depict in images.
Through my films, I like to show the diversity of Yakutia: that of its landscapes, the mountains, the tundra… and that of its inhabitants. For the peoples of the North, the rule is to help each other because a single man cannot survive the extreme conditions of our polar winter. The daily life of these peoples is threatened and I consider it my mission to film them.
Despite the atheism in which they were raised in the 20th century, the Sakha people have retained the feeling that spirits are present around us and that in nature everything has a soul. Yet today, the human being, a child of nature, even in Yakutia, has broken the privileged relationship he had with his environment. The hero of my film Balyksyt cherishes the nature that surrounds him and continues to live like our ancestors. The fish eagle that embodies the double of my hero is a metaphor for the preciousness of these beings who know how to live in harmony with nature: like this solitary fisherman, the fish eagle is an endangered species…”
