Braguino review – cryptic account of Siberian family feud

This is an opaque, unpersuasive and unenlightening piece from the French artist and film-maker Clément Cogitore, whose 2015 metaphysical mystery drama Neither Heaven Nor Earth was selected for Critics’ Week in Cannes. Frankly, this rather defeated me.

At only 48 minutes, it is not substantial enough to be rewarding as a fully achieved documentary, and its factual element is something that has to be taken on trust. Moreover, it isn’t sufficiently interesting visually, and is perhaps – paradoxically – too long to claim any real installation-crossover status.

The setting is the vast boreal forests of Siberia, where the Braguino family live in hermit-like oneness with nature. But they are in the throes of a feud with another family, the Kilines, who live just over the way. Then they are at loggerheads with central Russian government, whose representatives arrive menacingly by helicopter, threatening to overturn their way of life.

The action looks, sometimes, weirdly like a reconstruction of something that Cogitore supposes to have happened, or just some docu-realist fiction. This enigmatic quality, the film’s way of withholding the substance of what it appears to be getting at, makes this a difficult and ultimately unsatisfying watch.