Siberian Love

Without a husband you are not a woman A feature-length documentary by Olga Delane. Duration: 79 minutes What does a woman need to be happy and fulfilled? After 20 years of living in Berlin, director Olga Delane goes back to her roots in a small Siberian village, where she is confronted with traditional views of relationships, life and love. The man is the master of the home; the woman’s task is to beget children and take care of the household (and everything else, too). Siberian Love provides unrivalled insights into the (love) life of a Siberian village and seeks to uncover the truth around the universal value of traditional relationships.

The story behind

Many of the conversations and interviews that Olga Delane shot from 2012 to 2016 testify to an intensity, closeness and authenticity that could only be achieved with limited equipment and a very small team. Olga filmed around half of the recordings on her own with a small camera.

These intimate situations between the director and her protagonists are complemented by poetic and artistic images shot by the DoP Nikolai von Graevenitz. The joint work of the two cameras creates a documentary observation that describes village life and the life of the main characters.

In his artistic work on “Siberian Love”, the editor Philipp Gromov was able to fall back on an enormous amount of material from over five years of filming as well as a wide selection of protagonists and stories. From the beginning, the aim was to treat the protagonists with respect and love in order to paint a picture of their life without prejudice and clichés. The less beautiful aspects of village life also came into focus. The result is a portrait of the Russian rural population, which is unique in its openness and sensitivity.

The music for the film was specially composed by the well-known Russian group Folkbeat RF. Folkbeat RF combines classic Russian folk songs with “beatboxing”.

I was born in Siberia. At the age of 16, I migrated to Berlin in Germany with my family. There, I became the person I never could have become in Siberia.

For 20 years now, I have lived in this country; I speak its language, feel its pulse –and I feel German.

Throughout my life in Germany, I have led a lifestyle that was similar to those of my peers. I studied and wanted a career. Family planning was secondary.

Yet, since I travelled to Siberia, four years ago, I have been confronted with the lifestyle models of my relatives there, and I am asking myself if my way of life is correct. On the one hand, I feel longing for traditional values but on the other hand I greatly enjoy being independent and doing my artwork without having a family. So I often feel torn between my longing for family and a traditional life, and my independent Western life.

For Siberian Love, I went to the village of my relatives, Onon-Borzja, with its 270 inhabitants, to decide whether a life in this boundless expanse, the breathtaking beauty of nature, together with these earthly, stubborn, passionate and open people can be something for me.