30. Film Festival della Lessinia
Bosco Chiesanuova (Italia)
23 August - 1 September 2024

In 2021, an intense heat wave ignites vast fires in the subarctic forests of Sakha in northeastern Siberia. Shologon village is located in the midst of this taiga scenery, enveloped in smoke. The government is not providing aid to the village because it is on the edge of a "control zone", a term which, contrary to what we might imagine, exempts the authorities from intervening in sparsely populated areas, where putting out the fire would exceed the cost of the estimated damages. Left to themselves, the inhabitants unite to save their community, relying on the solidarity between people of different ethnic groups. The narration is intertwined with a Sakha fairy tale about the wind blowing on a sacred mountain, as in the village where the wind carries the flames ever closer, upsetting the balance. With the irony of a title describing a hellish situation, Paradise is powerful evidence of rapid climate change, in the polar regions.

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  Alexander Abaturov

  Born in Novosibirsk, Russia, in 1984, Alexander Abaturov is a graduate of Gorky University in Yekaterinburg. After working as a journalist, he moved to France to pursue a master's degree in directing at the École documentaire de Lussas. His documentary, Sleeping Souls (2013), was screened at many international film festivals, including the Cinéma du Réel. The Son (2018), his first feature film, was awarded a prize at the Berlinale Forum.