FATHER, SON AND HOLY TORUM

Ethnographic documentary about how the downfall of the Soviet Union changed the lives of the Khantys, a West-Siberian minority. The irreconcilable contradictions between old and new are especially strong in the generational conflict of one family: the father is a shaman, who wants to live at peace with nature and refuses to put down his bearskin and drum, which represent the insignia of his shamanic pride. The son, on the other hand, works for a Russian oil-company that wants to convince the Khantys to sell them their ancestral land, which the company could exploit for millions of barrels of oil – destroying all plant and animal-life in the area.