NOMINATED FOR BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT FILM
Directed by brother and sister duo Maxim Arbugaev and Evgenia Arbugaeva, this astonishing documentary short film features the Russian scientist Maxim Chakilev, who observes the life of walruses at Cape Heart-Stone in the Chukchi Sea. The Chukchi Sea Shelf is the westernmost part of the continental shelf of the United States and the easternmost part of the continental shelf of Russia. Within this shelf, the 50-mile (80 km) Chukchi Corridor acts as a passageway for one of the largest marine mammal migrations in the world.
In addition to directing, the Arbugaev siblings wrote the screenplay and did the astonishing cinematography (see the mouth-dropping Ariel shot below) while Evgenia coedited the movie with Joshua Chadwick.
The unique sound design is by Anastasia Dushina.
A “haulout” is a place where, once a year, walruses, after having traversed hundreds of miles of open ocean, return to the place of their birth to mate. Unfortunately, with global warming, almost all ice flows have vanished, and most walruses have to crowd onto a tiny beach – over 100,000 adults with their newborn babies crushed up against one another. There is one breathtaking aerial shot in its shocking brutality – one teeming mass of flesh moving in one direction, then another.
