Fifty-one minute documentary. A Russian family lives in the taiga (south of the tundra, north of the steppe) in eastern Siberia. In the vast expanse of wilderness, hundreds of miles from the nearest town, they moved in right next to another family that had done the same thing.
Two families living right next to each other in primitive conditions who hate each other and want to be alone might make a pretty good western, but not much happens here.
There was a documentary about a similar situation, The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden (2013). There are three small German households on an otherwise uninhabited island in the 1930's. They hate each other and apparently start murdering each other, but there was no way to prove it.
Nothing that dramatic happens here. We see the patriarch shooting ducks. The children plucking them was surprisingly ghastly. I fast forwarded when they started butchering a bear they killed. And a helicopter lands with some wealthy, belligerent, heavily armed hunters.
The families do have radios, satellite phones, flashlights and boats with motors on them and they care about their personal appearance for some reason.
Available on the Criterion Channel.
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