Few of Us

A young woman, played by Katerina Golubeva, arrives by helicopter in the snow-covered and God-forsaken part of Siberia where the Tofalars live. They are an Asian people that was still nomadic at the turn of the century. The people were forced to settle down, but they still live in their houses as if they were nomads.
In this almost documentary film, director Sharunas Bartas captures the lives of the Tofalars in intuitive series of images – faces, everyday activities but also the awe-inspiring beauty and incredible emptiness of the landscape. Atmospheric, sad and mysterious.
The marvellous Golubeva, who died much too young in 2011, was pregnant by her husband Bartas at the time of filming. Few of Us contains no dialogue but has a beautiful soundtrack, to which Bartas has added a few lines of poetry by A. Ribnikov: ‘We are but few, damn it, so few, but worst is that we are separated from one another.’