Berlin Premiere of Multivocality, a Film Anthology About Indigenous Peoples with Small Populations

There are cultures we know very little about, even though they exist alongside us.

How do the Udege, Evenki, Abaza, Shapsug, and Even people live today? Which traditions are preserved within families, what is happening to their native languages, and how does the younger generation answer the question for itself: what does it mean to belong to a people?

Multivocality is an anthropological film anthology bringing together five documentary films by young directors who travelled to different regions of Russia to tell the stories of Indigenous peoples with small populations.

The anthology features five films:

• Tynkha / Heritage (directed by Maryana Kalmykova) — the Abaza people, Karachay-Cherkessia
• The Law of the Taiga (directed by Rita Zaryuta) — the Udege people, Primorsky Krai
• L’apse [Shapse] (directed by Anton Nemov and Lisa Edinenie) — the Shapsug people, Krasnodar Krai
• Initiation (directed by Chingis Darmaev) — the Evenki people, Zabaykalsky Krai
• Hevek (directed by Ksenia Kazazaeva) — the Even people, Magadan Oblast

At the heart of these stories are ordinary people and their everyday lives: generations of reindeer herders preserving their traditional way of life in the tundra of Magadan Oblast; a craftsman safeguarding the secrets of a traditional Abaza knife; a boy setting off on his first hunting trip into the taiga; a family reviving tea cultivation on the land of their ancestors; and a hunter stepping onto a theatre stage for the first time to play Dersu Uzala.

Arina Pushkina, the project’s originator and producer, will be present at the screening and available to share more about the films and how they were made.

Learn more about the film anthology: https://lab.csff.ru/ethnic