Short Films

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Mined Zone

ICH-CHI

• Director: Kostas Marsaan
• RUSSIA / 2020 / DCP / Colour / 87’ / Russian, Sakha; Turkish, English s.t.

• Screenplay: Oleg Bogatov, Artem Zolotarev, Pavel Poluichik, Konstantin Danilov
• Director of Photography: Leonid Nikiforenko
• Editing: Konstantin Danilov, Egor Chichkanov
• Music: Andrei Guriyanov
• Cast: Borislav Stepanov, Marina Vasilyeva, Ilya Yakovlev
• Producer: Marianna Skrybykina
• Production Co.: Art Doydu Film Company
• World Sales: TVCO

Russian Federation's largest region in north-eastern Siberia, the Sakha Republic with its rich folkloric heritage has recently seen the formation of a new film culture operating outside Moscow and St Petersburg. One of the finest examples from the thriving local film industry in Yakutia, Kostas Marsaan's Ich-chi engages with the shamanic roots of the Sakha folklore. The film focuses on a Yakut family running an isolated farm. One of the sons visits the farm with his wife and child, and begs his parents to sell the farm to pay off a debt. As tensions rise in the family and relationships crumble over property, the father unearths the ich-chi of the farmland, a spirit buried in the premises. According to Sakha belief, all of nature is living and thus each aspect of nature has an ich-chi, collectively referring to the spirit-masters of things, natural phenomena, and land. A very original contribution to the global revival of folk horror genre, Marsaan's film pays tribute to his homeland by depicting it as a remote, inhospitable land of beauty haunted by folkloric spirits.

This film was a Meetings on the Bridge participant.