Paradise on earth? Through Werner Herzog’s lens, that’s what Bakhta, a village on the river Yenisei in Russia’s far north, might seem like—especially if you don’t mind the cold. “What looks like winter to us,” Herzog tells us, “is spring in the heart of Siberia.” He and co-director Dmitry Vasyukov capture the local people—nearly always in companionship with their dogs—making their own tools, trapping sable, felling trees to build boats, fishing, harvesting food for the long winter and holding ceremonies for the turning of the seasons. Plus they share their perspectives on greed, war and mortality, as the camera notes the arrival of modernity, in the form of helicopters and snowmobiles.
