Genre: Drama

Duration: 75 mins

Format: Digital

Director: Aleksei Fedorchenko

Cast: Yulia Aug, Igor Sergeev, Viktor Sukhorukov

Awards: Winner FIPRESCI Prize & Best Photography (2010 Venice Film Festival) Nominated for Best Film & Cinematography, (2010 Nika Awards)

When Miron's beloved wife Tanya passes away, he asks his best friend Aist to help him say goodbye to her according to the rituals of the Merya culture, an ancient Finno-Ugric tribe from Lake Nero, a picturesque region in West-Central Russia. The two men set out on a roadtrip across thousands of miles of boundless lands. Accompanying them on their journey are two small caged birds who will play an important role in shaping their destiny. Silent Souls is a transformative work of cinema that manouvres loss, memory and longing in a funereal ritual that is as much about a disappeared culture as it is about the death of a loved one. Although the Merya people blended into Greater Russia in the 17th century, their myths and traditions live on in their descendants' modern life. Along the way, as is custom for the Meryans, Miron shares intimate memories of his conjugal life to turn grief into tenderness. But as they reach the banks of the sacred lake where they will forever part with the body, he realises he wasn't the only one in love with Tanya. Passionate, atmospheric, otherworldly, eerily arresting and meaningful feels like we need the sentence to have an ending here.