Happy People: A Year in the Taiga (2010) - Herzog and Vasyukov invite us to meet a remote, tough Siberian people

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1 Film Excess nomination:

Best Documentary (lost to Secrets of the Tribe)

The wild nature of Siberia looks captivating on this neat poster for Werner Herzog and Dmitry Vasyukov's Happy People: A Year in the Taiga

From the small Siberian village of around 300 people, Bakhta, the trappers head out into the wilderness for several months of the year to fix and check their traps and huts, hunt and live only with their dogs.

Happy People is a film brimming with natural beauty, full of wow-moments often caused by what might appear to be small things such as the craftsmanship that is involved in making skies and a boat from a chopped down tree, the fierceness of the dogs etc. The film offers a lovely look in at an unusual way of life and also a fascinating and sad meeting with an indigenous people, the Ket people, who are going extinct.
Apart from this, it is generally life-affirming to meet this bunch of Russians that one can hardly but like. Directed by great German filmmaker Werner Herzog (Fitzcarraldo (1982)) and Dmitry Vasyukov (Pomori (2013)), Herzog's narration is as usual an added, wonderful quality of Happy People. One senses clearly that the Taiga-people here are idealized to some extent, but that seems okay in the context of this great documentary.

Related posts:

2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: Unknown
Box office: 338k $ (North America only)
= Unknown
[Happy People: A Year in the Taiga premiered in September (Telluride Film Festival) and runs 94 minutes. It was edited together from Vasyukov's Russian mini-series of around 3½ hours, Schastlivyye Lyudi (2007). The film was shown at some festivals and in a few countries. It opened to a 10k $ first weekend in just one theater in North America, where it peaked in 23 theaters and grossed the above figure. It isn't possible to label its theatrical performance on so little intelligence. Happy People: A Year in the Taiga is certified fresh at 87 % with a 6.9 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Happy People: A Year in the Taiga?