93 mins
The weather station on the Khodovarikha peninsula on the edge of the Russian Arctic Ocean in the Nenets Autonomous District is probably one of the loneliest workplaces in the world. Unimaginably the weather for our weather forecasts is measured there using the simplest of tools without any electronics. The residents are a professional soldier who has been retrained as a meteorologist and was traumatized in the Chechen war, his young wife, whose previous life in the world of cities and money was a brutal failure, a cancer-stricken pensioner who has returned to his birthplace, the aggressive, boozy head of the station with a dubious, possibly criminal past, and Jack, the dog. Five traumatized souls removed from society, who, in the solitude of the seemingly paradisiacal, hostile nature of the Arctic, try to deal with themselves, the absence of civilization, their human needs and shortcomings, and to master their lives.