Северный свет
Sergei Loznitsa
France | 2008 | 52 min
Language : Russian
Subtitles : French, English
In this pastoral documentary, Sergei Loznitsa captures an episode in the life of a fishing family who welcome two orphaned girls into a village in the Russian Far North bordering the White Sea. The sublimely sculptural setting constructs a narrative bordering on fiction, between desolate expanses, the slowed flow of time and intimate portraiture.
It is late autumn in this village in Karelia, at Russia’s far north, soon to be swallowed by the polar night, and connected to the rest of the country by a bumpy road and a railway. In this land where time flows slowly, Sergei Loznitsa has set up his camera. A commissioned film made for the L’Usage du monde series, Northern Light explores isolation through a single narrative thread: a moment in the life of a modest family that has adopted twin girls. Faithful to his method, the Ukrainian filmmaker gradually allows the situation to unfold from one shot to the next, lingering on micro-gestures and details – the glow of the stove’s embers, simmering pots, the orphaned sisters waking under a pile of blankets – which, through successive touches, reveal the intimacy of a home without ever intruding upon it. Like a short story in the literary sense, Loznitsa employs a rigorous and sensitive mise-en-scène, stylising one of the fringes of modernity populated by resilient wives and drunken, violent husbands, while the children weave fantasies to preserve their innocence from the harshness of the adult world.
Emmanuel Chicon
Emmanuel Chicon
Champ de Mars, 2026
Two Prosecutors, 2025Paleontology lesson, 2025L'Invasion, 2024The Kiev Trial, 2022The Natural History of Destruction, 2022Mr. Landsbergis, 2021Babi Yar. Contexte, 2021A Night at the Opera, 2020State Funeral, 2019The Trial, 2018Reflections, 2018Donbass, 2018A Gentle Creature, 2017Austerlitz, 2016The Event, 2015The Old Jewish Cemetery, 2015Bridges of Sarajevo, 2014Maidan, 2014The Letter, 2013The Miracle of Saint Anthony, 2012In the Fog, 2012My Joy, 2010Northern Light, 2008Revue, 2008Artel, 2006Blockade, 2006Factory, 2004Landscape, 2003The Settlement, 2002Portrait, 2002The Train Stop, 2000
Life, Autumn, 1998
Today We Are Going To Build A House, 1996
Two Prosecutors, 2025Paleontology lesson, 2025L'Invasion, 2024The Kiev Trial, 2022The Natural History of Destruction, 2022Mr. Landsbergis, 2021Babi Yar. Contexte, 2021A Night at the Opera, 2020State Funeral, 2019The Trial, 2018Reflections, 2018Donbass, 2018A Gentle Creature, 2017Austerlitz, 2016The Event, 2015The Old Jewish Cemetery, 2015Bridges of Sarajevo, 2014Maidan, 2014The Letter, 2013The Miracle of Saint Anthony, 2012In the Fog, 2012My Joy, 2010Northern Light, 2008Revue, 2008Artel, 2006Blockade, 2006Factory, 2004Landscape, 2003The Settlement, 2002Portrait, 2002The Train Stop, 2000
Life, Autumn, 1998
Today We Are Going To Build A House, 1996
Screenings and tickets
Screenplay
Sergei Loznitsa
Photography
Sergei Mikhalchuk
Editing
Sergei Loznitsa
Sound
Vladimir Golovnitski
Production
Serge Lalou
