68 mins
Epic forests of the Siberian Taiga and black lava landscapes of a Hawaiian volcano are woven through this quietly powerful film that opens out from a personal story about living with uncertainty. In an intimate letter to her young child, the filmmaker builds connections between Agafya Lykova, an elderly woman surviving alone in the Siberian forest since her birth, who scares bears away by banging on space-rocket debris, a crew in Hawaii simulating what isolated life could be on Mars and her young child discovering the world minute by minute. This endlessly surprising journey offers up images that shake ideas of the past, present and future to form a deeply tender vision of humanity and timeless survival on planet Earth. Xylouris White provides a haunting, original score.