Happy People: A Year in the Taiga

Werner Herzog presents a picturesque documentary about the life of the indigenous people living in the heart of the Siberian Taiga. With the commentary written and narrated by Herzog, the camera follows a trapper through all four seasons of a year.

Siberia extends from Ural to the Pacifi c and is one and a half times the size of the USA. There are 38 million people that live in this massive area, the majority of them in the prosperous south. In the heart of the Siberian wilderness, far away from civilization, 300 people inhabit a small village of Bakhtia at the river Yenisei. There are only two ways to reach this outpost; one is by helicopter, the other by boat. Here in Bakhtia, deep in the wilderness, there‘s no telephone available, running water or medical aid. The people are on their own.

The locals, whose daily routines have barely changed over the last centuries, keep living their lives according to their own values and cultural traditions.
If the human civilization was destroyed, they would survive thanks to the knowledge of their forefathers…! –Celluloid Dreams