Happy People: A Year in the Taiga (2008): Documentary Review of Life on the Yenisei in Bakhta
The other day I watched the documentary series Happy People, filmed in 2008: a camera crew from Moscow spent an entire year living alongside its subjects deep in the Siberian interior. It is a truly unusual film – some viewers will find it bright and inspiring, others harsh and melancholic, but it will not leave anyone indifferent.
Still from Happy People: winter fur trapping along the frozen banks of the Yenisei River
The film closely follows the everyday life of the residents of Bakhta, a remote village in the Turukhansky District of Krasnoyarsk Krai. Cut off from the outside world, the settlement sits on the bank of the Yenisei at the mouth of the Bakhta River, reachable only by boat in summer and by helicopter the rest of the year.
What the Film Is About and Why It Carries That Title
The daily routines, traditional crafts, and character of taiga hunters, fishermen, and villagers are shown plainly, without embellishment, yet with deep respect. Viewers in Krasnoyarsk Krai were among the first to appreciate the series, and director Dmitry Vasyukov explained the title in simple terms:
“Happy People is a title without any hidden subtext, without any Aesopian language, without any double meaning. Just like that – happy people. Because they truly are happy. I never imagined that such a thing was even possible, that a person in our country could feel and live this way.”
Four Episodes – Four Seasons of the Year
The original Russian cycle consists of four episodes running roughly 50 minutes each, with every part dedicated to a distinct season of the taiga year:
- Spring: preparing for the new trapping cycle, carving and fire-expanding dugout boats from aspen logs, distilling birch-bark tar by hand, and watching the massive ice breakup on the Yenisei.
- Summer: the brief high-water season spent salting and storing fish for the year ahead, cutting hay, tending kitchen gardens, and enduring relentless clouds of taiga blackflies and mosquitoes.
- Autumn: packing supplies for the deep forest, hauling provisions up Yenisei tributaries to remote hunting territories, working with Laika dogs, and setting traditional log deadfall traps.
- Winter: the harshest and most important season – months of solitary sable trapping from tiny log cabins in temperatures dropping past -40 °C (-40 °F), crafting wide wooden skis lined with elk leg hide, and celebrating New Year’s Eve alone in the snowbound taiga.
Awards and International Recognition:
- Laurel Branch Award (2008): at Russia’s national non-fiction film festival, Dmitry Vasyukov’s work won the Lavrovaya Vetv (“Laurel Branch”) prize for “Best Documentary Series of 2008.”
- Werner Herzog’s Edition (2010): German filmmaker Werner Herzog saw a copy of the series in the United States and collaborated on a 90-minute international feature cut titled Happy People: A Year in the Taiga, writing and recording the English narration himself. It premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in September 2010 and introduced the people of Bakhta to audiences worldwide.
Personal Impressions After Watching
After finishing the film, I was left with mixed feelings. On the one hand, these people live in harmony with nature and are genuinely happy in their own way; on the other hand, leaving home for months to trap in the deep taiga, not seeing your family, and wintering in a tiny cabin without basic comforts is extraordinarily hard. I have been a city dweller for a long time, and that way of life feels daunting – even when you work day and night in the city, you still see your family far more often.
Of course, not everyone in the village chooses long-range wilderness trapping as their main livelihood, and a hunter’s income depends heavily on luck and fur prices. Either way, the people in this documentary command sincere respect: regardless of brutal frosts and grueling conditions, they rely entirely on their own hands, raise and educate their children, take joy in life, and cherish the brief moments they can rest at home with loved ones before heading back out to earn their living.