The Winter Road Documentary Poster

This is the video preview of Nikolay Evstifeev’s documentary “THE WINTER ROAD. The Land of Fierce…” about the sever work in Siberia’s Yakutia. Here you can see how hard ordinary people’s work can be in the toughest part of Siberia.

The documentary film won The Best Directing Award at The 17th Saint Anna Film Festival and The Best Cinematography Award at The 29th VGIK Film Festival. Btw, Anton Safronov was a camera man.

The documentary is about Yakutia, the sever land of truckers, gold miners, hunters, oil & other industry workers. Extreme conditions are revealed in every capture. Survival at minus 50 degrees Celsius, ice roads on rivers, people’s attitude to nature, wild life… and PEOPLE without false manners and any compromises.

Young documentary filmmakers traveled winter roads in Yakutia, Siberia/Russia. They met many ordinary workers, who appeared to be real heroes of daily life.

“This film is very sincere! This is a real big documentary!” said Michael Porechenkov, the chairman of the 29th VGIK Film Festival jury, a famous Russian actor.

One more thing

Nikolay Evstifeev is a Yakutian. He was born here. He tends to say about himself like this, “I am a guy from the remote province of Yakutia. I spent my childhood playing football with diamonds against bears.” The last sentence must be considered as a joke.

In the video

The interview with a Siberian/Yakutian ice road trucker. He says that he doesn’t have high education, thus he can’t find a good-paid job in the city. Maximum non-educated worker may earn 15,000 rubles (500 USD) per month. To work daily for such a little salary is not worth at all. That amount of money is not enough for living. By working as a trucker, he can work much more. That’s why he prefered to be a truck driver.

Here on a winter road it is, indeed, tough, unsafe and risky, everything can happen to a driver on the way, but it pays. He can raise pretty much funds for one ride and afford himself to buy any food he wishes, etc.

P.S. Thank a friend of mine, Slava Petrov, for letting me know about this documentary with real life depiction.