Pushkin House, in collaboration with the 18th Native Spirit Film Festival, presents an afternoon dedicated to Sakha film, language and culture led by the Sakha community in London.

The Sakha Republic (Yakutia) in northeastern Siberia is the largest republic in Russia, known for extremely cold winters around −50°C, a wealth of natural resources, and an internationally acclaimed Indigenous film movement known as “‘Sakhawood”,’ producing more than half of films outside Moscow and St Petersburg. 

This programme features three such recent works: Vladimir Kocharyan’s documentary and personal journey Yakutia – Between The Worlds (2024), a study of what lies behind the term “Yakut cinema”; Kyhynngy Oyuur’s animation Syppyt Suruktar / Lost Letters (2024), which “invites [viewers] to reconsider human-nature relations, and think as a collective – not individual – beings, whose lives are interwoven with the processes of nature”; and Ayaal Adamov’s experimental Aykuo (2023), a mystical work with elements of the northern Yakut epic Olonkho.

Yakutia – Between The Worlds
dir. Vladimir Kocharyan, 2024
Running time: 68 mins
In Sakha and Russian with English subtitles

Syppyt Suruktar / Lost Letters
dir. Kyhynngy Oyuur, 2024
Running time: 12 min
In Sakha with English subtitles

Aykuo
dir. Ayaal Adamov, 2023
Running time: 20 min
In Sakha and Russian with English subtitles

5a Bloomsbury Square London WC1A 2TA