All-terrain vehicle "Burlak": the film "The North is near"
The film «The North is Near». 2019. Production: Russia / «Amur waves» (Amurskie Volny). Genre: Road movie, documentary. Film director and scriptwriter: Roman Super. Cast: Aleksei Makarov, Maksim Belonogov, Sergei Berent, Aleksandr Miakonkikh, Sergei Lapin, Konstantin Gavrilov, Evgenii Skazka.
The plot of the film is based on the second part of «The North is Near» expedition. In the spring of 2019, the daredevils in three all-terrain vehicles covered more than 6000 km along the North-Eastern coast of Russia from Novy Urengoy to Anadyr in 29 days. They chose directions, and powerful Arctic vehicles carried them straight on.
The film begins in Tiksi and shows Russia hidden under snowbanks and the ever-frost layer. In Burlak all-terrain vehicles, the travelers passed places where other vehicles got stuck in the snow forever. While driving through the most remote inhabited localities and weather stations, they got acquainted with the everyday life of locals. They had to go through blizzard, rows of ice ridges and thermokarsts, repaired vehicles at 35°C below zero. The travelers visited the former distributional center of the Gulag, a ship graveyard, abandoned villages and saw true lords of the North — white bears.
As in the days of the earliest explorers, the Far North is far from being a perfect place for people. Severe frost, lack of roads and thousands of kilometers of snowy wastelands among small inhabited islets.
The Russian North is part of world history and culture. This fact makes it more interesting to look at how the film director shows this territory and looks for answers to difficult questions about life, which we all ask ourselves from time to time.