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Arctic Boyhood

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Arctic Boyhood

Coming of age on the Greenland tundra.

<begin subtitles> 01:00:35:00 01:00:36:04 There’s one. 01:00:36:10 01:00:37:22 I just missed it. 01:00:55:03 01:00:57:17 I’ve done this so many times, 01:00:58:04 01:01:00:15 my teeth hurt now. 01:01:04:15 01:01:07:10 Soup is all I’m good for. 01:01:10:22 01:01:13:03 You’re ready. Go on. 01:01:13:10 01:01:14:12 Pull. 01:01:14:16 01:01:15:15 Like this? 01:01:15:19 01:01:17:08 Come on, with all your might. 01:01:18:09 01:01:19:11 Harder, harder! 01:01:20:02 01:01:22:12 Poor kid, not too hard. 01:01:23:11 01:01:25:18 Almost finished. 01:01:28:05 01:01:30:14 And here’s your dog’s harness. 01:01:32:17 01:01:35:10 When you’re on a sled 01:01:35:17 01:01:37:06 with your dogs, 01:01:37:23 01:01:40:02 you’ll put this harness on them, 01:01:40:11 01:01:42:18 and you’ll think of me. 01:01:51:20 01:01:52:21 Hey, you. 01:02:20:02 01:02:21:11 Scoop up the ice. 01:02:21:20 01:02:23:01 Scoop up the ice. 01:02:29:14 01:02:30:22 Here, look. 01:02:31:11 01:02:32:19 Like this. 01:02:57:02 01:02:59:21 Once upon a time there was a village 01:03:00:04 01:03:03:12 where the hunters who left in kayaks, 01:03:04:09 01:03:07:21 disappeared one by one. 01:03:08:10 01:03:12:14 So food started running out and the village was without its men. 01:03:13:02 01:03:18:00 Soon only a little boy remained who had never left the village. 01:03:18:13 01:03:23:13 He decided to take his kayak to find out what was going on. 01:03:24:02 01:03:26:20 “Qajaarngaa! Qajaarngaa!” 01:03:27:08 01:03:29:16 “Come, please.” 01:03:29:20 01:03:32:08 So he paddled toward the cries. 01:03:34:11 01:03:36:09 It was an old woman 01:03:37:04 01:03:41:14 who was calling from the shore. 01:03:42:13 01:03:45:14 The little boy followed her into her house. 01:03:46:16 01:03:51:09 He looked down and saw human bones. 01:03:51:19 01:03:55:17 And on the walls hung severed heads. 01:03:55:21 01:04:00:08 The faces belonged to the village’s hunters. 01:04:01:17 01:04:04:20 The boy, listening only to his courage, 01:04:05:06 01:04:08:15 grabbed her by the hair. 01:04:09:20 01:04:14:05 He picked up a woman’s knife off the ground, 01:04:14:15 01:04:17:21 and in one fell swoop, cut her head right off. 01:04:21:13 01:04:26:11 Qajaarngaa went home. 01:04:28:04 01:04:31:12 Now alone among all the women, 01:04:31:16 01:04:37:09 he became a great hunter. 01:04:38:00 01:04:40:09 The best in the whole region. 01:04:40:17 01:04:43:07 The village never went hungry again.

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Coming of age on the Greenland tundra.CreditCredit...Samuel Collardey

I started making documentaries by shooting fragments of my family’s life on their farm, in the snow-covered mountains of Jura, in eastern France. My fascination with documenting rural, snow-covered and remote worlds on film is what led me to Greenland.

I first visited Greenland in 2015. That was when I met Julius, a villager who guided me through the five villages around Tasiilaq, which with around 2,000 inhabitants is the largest town on Greenland’s east coast. It quickly became obvious I would focus my film on Julius’s own village, Tiniteqilaaq. The village has only around 60 inhabitants and is isolated from the rest of the world by ice for about nine months every year. Over the course of the next year, I spent several months there and learned to share the lifestyle of its inhabitants: I went hunting and fishing with the men, shared family dinners of seal and narwhal, and attended baptisms and funerals. Little by little, I was accepted by Julius’s friends and family. After all, we shared more in common than it might have seemed: Since I come from a village of 250 in Jura, there is nothing less exotic to me than a village half that size.

Ultimately, I wound up using my time in Julius’s town to make my fourth feature film, “A Polar Year,” from which this short documentary is adapted. Just as my feature film traces the village’s life over one year, through the changing seasons and rhythms of life and death, for this short I followed one of its young residents during the routine of a single day.

The result is a portrait of Asser Boassen, an 8-year-old Tunumiit boy who wants to become a hunter. Like many children of his village, Asser has not been raised by his biological parents. Instead, he lives with his grandparents, Thomasine and Gert Jonathansen. In many ways, Asser’s daily life as a young boy, fed by the hunting tradition passed on by his grandfather and by the mythical stories told by his grandmother, represents challenges many in modern Greenland are navigating. When Asser turns 12, he will have to leave his village to attend middle school in the city, far away. When he returns to his village, he will be 16, effectively an adult, and uprooted from the traditions and knowledge he spent his childhood absorbing from his grandparents. Across the country, Inuit children are torn between two conceptions of education, one rooted in their native identity and the other imposed by a globalized world — knowledge that is essential for navigating that very world. The outcomes are often problematic. But for now Asser is just a child dreaming to become a great hunter. As great as Qajaarngaa, the mythical hunter who triumphs in Asser’s grandmother’s tale.

Samuel Collardey is a French director and cinematographer. “A Polar Year,” from which this film is adapted, screened at the Sundance Film Festival this year.

Op-Docs is a forum for short, opinionated documentaries, produced with creative latitude by independent filmmakers and artists. Learn more about Op-Docs and how to submit to the series.

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