Northern Russia, the Mezen River basin. For decades, spent stages of rockets launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome have fallen here, on the periphery of Russia’s space industry. The film is based on footage from the 2000s, shot by Chechen—the head of a metal-salvage team—who, with the obsession of a pioneer, spends months searching by touch for rocket debris in the northern forests and swamps.

This story is about the Russian North. The research undertaken by the author began with the villages in the Arkhangelsk region, near the White Sea, where his family comes from and where he spent his childhood. A significant part of the villages is remote from cities and often has no connection with them, except for air transport.