The toughest film I've ever made...

Two years ago I made a film with a Nenets family in Yamal Peninsula, Siberia.

The idea was to travel with them and their herd of reindeer for 3 weeks as part of their 1500km yearly migration.

We chose December as the time to do this because we were advised that this would be the harshest time of the year to experience this way of life.

In midwinter, you spend most of the day in darkness

. . .

What happened to us on that trip took me a bit by surprise.

I mean, I knew that it would be cold but I didn't realise how bad it would be.

With daily temperatures hovering around minus 40 Celcius, much of our gear malfunctioned... the liquid crystal display on our Sony FS7 Camera froze solid, so we could neither focus nor see what we were framing in any shot. My Canon 5D's had banding lines across the images and both of my drones crashed... one day, one of them even flew away randomly towards the horizon due to the GPS anomalies that you will experience at such high latitudes.

The coldest place I've ever been

The hardest thing about traveling the Nenets' way in such extreme temperatures is that when you arrive at your destination every day, freezing cold and exhausted, there is no warm fire awaiting you... no soft, cosy seat and a hot drink.... it's pitch black and you still have to build your home from scratch.

It can be a really disheartening experience let me tell you.

. . .

What I found totally astounding about the Nenets is that they don't just live and work in this incredibly inhospitable place... they thrive there. What is also fascinating is that their way of living has remained relatively unchanged for a very long time.

Now, many people would look at this fact and deduce that they are somehow stuck living in the past.

Well, after spending 3 weeks traveling with a family, I can report back that this is certainly NOT the case.

. . .

Nomadic Nenets rely on reindeers for almost every aspect of their lives...

They eat reindeer meat.
They live in homes made from reindeer skin.
They dress in clothes and boots made from reindeer fur.
They travel on sledges drawn by reindeers.

The reason that they still have such a strong reliance upon their animals is that modern technology has yet to offer them a better way of living their nomadic life in this part of the world.

Whilst most traveling families have one Ski-doo, they are grossly overpriced and will last about 2 years at these temperatures... as opposed to reindeers, which never break down and don't need expensive fuel to make them run..

Imported clothing is not warm enough. Imported tents are useless. In fact, other than a snow mobile, the only foreign items most commonly used by families are satellite phones and TVs (with batteries) plus a small generator to charge them.

Everything else is a waste of money.