In the Lands of Silence - Nikolai and Ludmila

While shooting his latest film, which takes place in the Siberian taiga region, fate led the documentary-maker Zdeněk N. Bričkovský to Nikolaj and Ludmila. Even though they don't know each other, they have a lot in common. Fifty-year-old Ludmila lives alone on the edge of the forgotten Siberian village of Ordzhonikidze. She writes poems and she paints. She has spent part of her life in an Orthodox convent and she is convinced that a person is nothing without god. The deeply devout Nikolaj is the same age. He lives in a small house on the banks of the Angara River. His cathedral is the local unspoilt countryside in which he goes hunting and fishing every day. Nikolaj adheres to an old Slavonic pagan faith, whose highest deity is Rod, with whom he can communicate via the music of natural sounds. The specific poetics of this film imbued with many lyrical passages are enhanced by an impressive score of background sound, part of which is provided by Nikolaj himself, who sings melancholic songs on his old guitar.