“Life of Ivanna “is not a film for conservatives, straight-edgers or fragile vegan souls. One of the things that would burn their brains is the fact that the (theoretically) single mother is smoking inside of the family home, and her young ones even know how to light a cigarette for her on the constantly burning stove. She lets them walk in and out, some barely dressed for the freezing Siberian cold, and the air in the cabin – although super warm, can't be the best considering the combined smoke from the stove and Ivanna's cigarettes, plus kids using potties. Even Ivanna ocassionaly goes out dressed in nothing but T-shirt and jeans to get something or make a ‘call' to her husband over the radio.
Life of Ivanna is screening at Black Movie International Festival of Independent Movies
Somewhere half an hour into the film, when the whole family feasts on raw raindeer meat, with kids drinking the still warm blood from the slaughtered animal and loving it, there will be a sensitive heart calling for a beatroot in a shreaking voice: “Poor animals!” or maybe “What about the climate change!”. The thing is – besides the fact that there is no such thing as a supermarket or anything growing in the snow-covered ground – if there is someone who knows plenty about the climate change, that is Ivanna herself. Her mobile home is in the north Siberian area of the Arctic Circle which have been heavily impacted by oil drilling since the 1980s, and her raindeers – the only source of income for the family are dying. Ivanna knows that the life she's known so far is nearing its end, and she has to move her mobile home more often than she would care to. The storms are getting nastier, and the animals are getting hungry. There is a decision that needs to be taken, and it's not a light one.
Ivanna is a mother of five underage kids and the sixth is on its way. They are all children of her wedded husband Gena who simply didn't want to live in tundra anymore, so he simply moved to the city to ‘earn money'. Instead of supporting the family, he still doesn't have a job and spends all the money on boozing and karaoke with his flatmates. It's a very complicated story that goes away a decade back when Ivanna's family took pity on him after his parents drawned and took the boy in to live with them.
Ivanna, on the other side, lives with her kids in a barely 15 square meters large mobile home consisting of one room where six souls sleep and eat, wash themselves and use it as the toilett. To watch the frenzy in such a tiny space which is used to the maximum – with every inch of it serving its exact purpose – is hypnotizing, and you do expect to detect an extra room that would explain how can so many people fit in. It is absolutely incomprehensible that there was somehow a a spot where two more people could join the family: the director Renato Borrayo Serrano and his co-cinematographer Darya Sidorova. Regardless of how they pulled that off, they seemed to be completely invisible for Ivanna and her family except on the rare moments when kids would show small signs of noticing the outsiders; a dance, a prank, a silent demonstration of something. That breaks the wall between the two sides, and takes a huge chunk of ‘fly on the wall' element away. This said, the camera feels like an organic part of Ivanna's life, eager to catch the imporant snippets of her life. Borrayo Serrano & Sidorova are everywhere they move, be it in closed spaces or outdoors, not leaving the young woman out of their sight.
The film was shot over four years which the viewer starts realizing by watching the children growing. Only Ivanna stays the same: strong and unshaken by anything. When her husband becomes violent during their visit, she won't have it and simply leaves but not without previously giving him her a piece of her mind. What she brings back home is the wish to change her life completely and to have it better.
How will the family of nomads adapt to their new life in Dudinka City, suddenly deprived of their freedom to live the way they feel like from moment to moment, we will probably never find out.
