Finland / 2020 / 87mins / Finnish, Swedish, Sámi, Tlingit, Yupik, Inuktitut / Chinese & English subtitles

Director Markku Lehmuskallio has had long connections to the indigenous peoples of the North and has been making films about their lives, art and music since the 1970s. In this latest film, codirected with his son Johannes Lehmuskallio, he composes a fascinating poetic ethnography inspired by indigenous cultures living in the Arctic Circle. Ways of life inherited from ancestors have largely been crushed, but the inner worldview of the people has withstood these challenges and remained intact, at least until now.

Anerca is a film about the breathing amongst the indigenous peoples of the Arctic. There are two types of breathing, life-sustaining breath and that which expresses existence. In Inuit, the word to breathe is a derivative of Anerca. Anerca means soul, breath of life. In the film Anerca, Arctic peoples breathe.