''Far North'' is an independently produced film by director

Asif Kapadia Asif Kapadia (born 1972) is a British filmmaker. Academy Award, BAFTA and Grammy winning director Asif Kapadia has made his name directing visually striking films exploring ‘outsiders’, characters living in extreme circumstances, fighting ...

, based on a

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest ...

Sara Maitland Sara Maitland (born 27 February 1950) is a British writer of religious fantasy. A novelist, she is also known for her short stories. Her work has a magic realist tendency. Life and career Sarah (later "Sara") Louise Maitland was born in London ...

. It was screened at various film festivals in 2007 and 2008 before an American DVD release on 23 September 2008.

Plot

The film opens up with a voiceover of a woman named Saiva telling the listener that a

shaman Shamanism is a religious practice that involves a practitioner (shaman) interacting with what they believe to be a spirit world through altered states of consciousness, such as trance. The goal of this is usually to direct spirits or spir ...

said she was cursed at birth and would bring harm to anyone she cared for. While she and a young woman named Anja are camping in a

subarctic The subarctic zone is a region in the Northern Hemisphere immediately south of the true Arctic, north of humid continental regions and covering much of Alaska, Canada, Iceland, the north of Scandinavia, Siberia, and the Cairngorms. Genera ...

region of

Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part ...

, in desperation, she takes one of her sled dogs and after calming it, slits its throat, foreshadowing the shaman's prophecy about her birth. She and Anja then set out to relocate their camp. On the way, they almost get caught by Soviet/Russian soldiers. Fearing the worst, Saiva ventures out with Anja into the far north to the

arctic tundra In physical geography, tundra () is a type of biome where tree growth is hindered by frigid temperatures and short growing seasons. The term ''tundra'' comes through Russian (') from the Kildin Sámi word (') meaning "uplands", "treeless mou ...

, passing abandoned telephone wire trees and to the area where she believes no one would ever find them. After a long paddle north, they pitch camp on a beach, where they set up their

yurt A yurt (from the Turkic languages) or ger ( Mongolian) is a portable, round tent covered and insulated with skins or felt and traditionally used as a dwelling by several distinct nomadic groups in the steppes and mountains of Central Asia ...

. While sleeping in the night, Saiva has a flashback to her past among the reindeer tribes, after being shunned by her own tribe. In her flashback, she encounters a man who invites her into his tribe to help with the reindeer round-up. The two fall in love with each other, and after a time he gives her a wolf claw necklace. Going back to the present, Saiva and Anja live a harsh brutal life in the tundra hunting animals for their survival. One day while hunting alone, Saiva encounters a badly wounded man nearly frozen and starved to death. After his collapse, she tries to loot him, but the man regains consciousness briefly and asks for her help. Accepting him, Saiva brings him to the yurt and cleans his wounds. Later the man claims the name of "Loki". The next day on a hunting trip with them, Loki asks what he can do for them in return for their kindness and Saiva asks him to bring a

reindeer Reindeer (in North American English, known as caribou if wild and ''reindeer'' if domesticated) are deer in the genus ''Rangifer''. For the last few decades, reindeer were assigned to one species, ''Rangifer tarandus'', with about 10 subs ...

. After a failed seal hunt, Loki tells Saiva in their yurt that he was an escapee from soldiers that came to clear out the tundra, and that if they find him they will shoot him. He then shows them his portable hand-cranked radio, one of several clues that the story takes place in the last decades of the 20th century. Later, Loki tries to keep his promise by bringing them a reindeer. But as he is about to shoot one, he is detained by a couple of Soviet soldiers. Just as they are about to put him in their boat, he fights back and kills both of them. He then comes back with their looted supplies and gives them to Saiva and Anja. Over the next few months Loki and Anja fall in love with each other. Saiva tries to warn him about her secret, but Anja interrupts her and they hang out with each other more and more. Another flashback scene shows Saiva finding all of her tribe dead, except for the man that she fell in love with and a baby. She is captured by soldiers. One of the soldiers who slaughtered her village rapes her after slitting the man's throat. She finds the baby after that in one of the yurts, and one of the soldiers tells her to cooperate with her or he will skin the baby alive. Later when she and the soldiers were crossing a glacier, she used a knife to cut the rope, causing all of the soldiers to fall into a

crevasse A crevasse is a deep crack, that forms in a glacier or ice sheet that can be a few inches across to over 40 feet. Crevasses form as a result of the movement and resulting stress associated with the shear stress generated when two semi-rigid p ...

. She then heads out alone with the baby into the northland. Once again going back to the present, Anja and Loki spend more and more time together during the following months. One night when Saiva is out hunting, they have intercourse. Loki eventually fulfills his promise on killing a reindeer. As their love builds up, Loki and Anja plan on leaving to go to civilization and have a family of their own. When Anja tells this to Saiva one evening, Saiva is speechless. As tension builds up Saiva's mind gets more and more worked up with depression of her daughter's leave; even when Anja asks her to come with them she is speechless. That night Loki goes out hunting. When Anja returns to the yurt, Saiva tricks Anja into combing her hair and chokes Anja to death with her own hair, in a scene reminiscent of the opening scene. She then skins Anja's face and disguises herself with it. When Loki comes back, he has sex with Saiva, assuming that she is Anja, but he then discovers Saiva's identity. Horrified, he flees the yurt naked into the frozen tundra. The film ends with Saiva sobbing alone in her yurt.

Cast

Michelle Yeoh Michelle Yeoh Choo Kheng, ( ; born 6 August 1962) is a Malaysian actress. Credited as Michelle Khan in her early Hong Kong films, she rose to fame in the 1990s after starring in a series of Hong Kong action films where she performed her own ...

as Saiva *

Michelle Krusiec Michelle Jacqueline Krusiec (born Ya-Huei Yang; ; October 2, 1974) is an American actress, writer and producer. Early life Krusiec was born in 1974 in Taiwan. She was adopted at age five and raised in America by her father's elder sister, who ha ...

as Anja *

Sean Bean Sean Bean (born Shaun Mark Bean on 17 April 1959) is an English actor. After graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Bean made his professional debut in a theatre production of ''Romeo and Juliet'' in 1983. Retaining his Yorkshire ac ...

as Loki

References

External links

IMDb Entry
* {{Asif Kapadia 2007 films 2007 independent films British crime drama films Films scored by Dario Marianelli Filicide in fiction Films about curses Films based on short fiction Films directed by Asif Kapadia Films about hunters Films set in the Arctic Films set in the 20th century Films set in Siberia Films set in the Soviet Union Films about rape 2000s English-language films 2000s British films