Eighth month of the full-scale war against Ukraine. Couple of hundred kilometres from the border Essentuki mud bath clinic is operating as usual. Visitors sign children up for special inhalations, as new portions of throbbing tambukan mud is loaded into the rusty soviet supply system. Exhausted nurses immerse customers into thick substance, then swaddle their bodies. Frontline news and barking voices of propagandists are echoing across the halls. And a laundry worker is keeping count, down below in the basement while singing an old Odessan song…

Documentary drama about the irreversibility and cyclicity of history and people living on the ruins of an empire.

The Northerners is a cycle of film essays with a focus on Northern individualism. Each one of the three parts plays out in different places around the Kola Peninsula over one day. The story evolves around the everyday life of three people that share no formal ties. Igor, who belongs to a dynasty of pilots, is a polar aviation squad commander; Vassily is a Murmansk merchant port tug master; Volodya is a woodcutter, leader of a wood harvesting guild. As most of those living in the North, they came here for work, and though they weren’t initially planning on staying on, they ended up staying forever. They share this peculiar perception of reality, a special rhythm of life and the way they see themselves and others. They have taught themselves not to fear to surrender their lives to natural cycles, to be proactive, to count on no one but themselves yet to always help everyone, even strangers, not to make plans and not to get down.