Happy People: A Year in the Taiga

With his fondness for icy wastelands and fringe communities, veteran German director Werner Herzog was a natural choice to rework and re-edit this Russian documentary about a vast Siberian woodland that rims the Arctic Circle. The film began as a four-hour TV series directed by Dmitry Vasyukov, aided by Mikhail Tarkovsky, nephew of cinematic legend Andrei. Distilling the material into a single feature, Herzog then added his signature gravel-voiced philosophical commentary, plus a stirring orchestral score. The result is a spellbinding winter wonderland of bleakly beautiful landscapes, stoic frontier lifestyles and dying folk traditions.