Vikhod

Directed by a brother and sister duo, the Academy Award-nominated "Vykhod" ("Haulout" in English) portrays a scientist on the coast of the Chukchi Sea who watches the walruses come in every year. But global warming has reduced the sea ice, putting a strain on the pinnipeds.

Like polar bears, walruses are a canary in the coal mine. After all, what happens in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic. If it goes, so does a lot of the world; when you try to fight nature, you eventually lose. The documentary is only half an hour, but it tells us a lot. Definitely worth your time. Available on YouTube.

In Chukota on the Siberian Arctic sea, a rusted old wreck sits abandoned on the beach. Nearby, we meet a lone scientist who has come to this remote location amidst the dense September fog to witness a natural phenomenon. Fortunately, he has the shelter of a wooden shack - for he must wait longer and look at books that depict what has gone on here in years gone by. He forages for fuel to keep out the encroaching chill on the wind. Still no sign. Then he is awoken from his sleep by a sound. The noise of an whole herd of walruses that have come to call. Well to breed on the beach actually - and they are crowding around his little hut twenty-deep. Their huge mass could reduce it to rubble in moments - but it's as if it's their beacon and they appear quite timid towards him... He heads to the roof and observes as they get on with their true purpose in being here - a bit of rutting, some showing off and some breeding! It's October and he reckons there are about 95,000 of them! He is essentially trapped inside so is reduced to scavenging old dog-ends to try and make a cigarette, and luckily they don't seem able to smell his tinned fish. What is increasingly worrying though is that here's no ice. Not a sign. Not even a snowflake. They need that to rest and feed. Without it, they cram onto the sand. Then, after forty-odd days, as if as to a call-to-arms, they start to head back to the open water and are mostly gone, save for what he estimates to be some 600 corpses left as pickings for the birds. It's now that his investigations begin in earnest. What led to their deaths? Malnutrition, exhaustion, over-crowding? Is this symptomatic of climate change affecting their food stocks and/or the water temperature? There's no narration, just the powerful photography to leave us asking our own questions about the sustainability of this ancient migratory procession.

Road to the Oscars 2023. This documentary is nominated for 1 award and it´s best documentary short. Haulout is weird to rank and talk about. It´s more of a surreal experience than a documentary and it feels more like a film filmed for fiction than fact. It´s a very visually stringing doc though and instead of saying a lot of things it instead just wants you to see them.

In a remote hut, a man sits and waits for an event that only happens once a year. He records the event and later must conclude that things are changing here on earth.

This is a really visually striking documentary. It´s not really filmed in a traditionally documentary way and it creates these beautiful and surreal images. This is both a good and bad thing. At times it can feel like you're not really watching a documentary but more of a surreal horror movie or something like that. I liked the style, but I don´t know if I liked it for the documentary genre. But some of the images captured are beautiful and most have been a trip to experience.

As mentioned, the style and tone are less documentary and more surreal absurd comedy and horror. It´s interesting to have a doc in this style but it really clashes with my film mind. It´s telling me what I´m looking at is not real and that should not be the case when it´s supposed to show reality. There are so many cute and fun scenes, but also weird and dragged out that makes it seem a bit scary in tone at times. '

When the moment comes, and the doc really starts it hits you. It has this abrupt beginning of the event, and it just wants to show you what´s going on. No comments or text, just images.

There is a lot of wasted time here. We see a lot of the biologist just sitting, doing nothing, and it can feel like the doc, once again is taking it´s beautiful imagery and making a movie more than a documentary. If this had been longer than it was, I would have liked it far less. It´s only because of it´s short runtime it can get away with what it did.

This doc is a different way to talk about issues. Normally when you make a doc of this nature, you wud have foreboding music, giant graphs of danger. Voiceover and text that really tells you "Danger here is a problem" but this doc is honest and just says "here, look at this". It´s a more honest approach but I would say not as impactful.

I place this documentary in the middle of the rating spectrum. I might rank it higher or lower in the future but I´m very torn about it. I liked it´s approach and style but hated it was a doc. It really undermines what it wants to say by being too filmic and it can feel like nothing is really said.

Oscar predictions: I could see this go and win. It´s a political statement from the academy and the more filmic approached might speak to some voters. Now the creator is Russian so that might affect the voting with a most likely, anti-Russian discourse at this years event, but I have no idea if it will affect anything. So far, I would rather have the Elephant Whisperers winning, but I see them as on par. I hope a better short documentary will blow me more away than the 2 I have seen so far.

Greetings again from the darkness. For the first few minutes, we aren't sure what we are watching. Maxim is huddled in a rustic cabin on the shore of the Russian Arctic. He eats canned good (from the can), boils his water, and recycles his cigarettes. One morning he awakens to the grunting and groaning noises occurring outside. What follows is a stunning and spectacular shot of tens of thousands of walruses huddled on the beach by his hut.

It turns out Maxim is a Marine Biologist, and he spends 43 days observing this annual ritual of walruses as part of a 10 year study. Although the walruses show up every year, the effects of climate change are obvious. There is no longer ice for them to rest on during the trek. This exhausts the creatures, causing the death toll to increase each year. Co-directors (and brother and sister) Maxim Arbugaev and Evgenia Arbugaeva deliver a beautiful (considering the harsh conditions) 25-minute film, and a stark reminder of how animals are being forced to adapt to the changes.

Beautifully, quietly shot with a fully immersive soundscape that draws you in from frame one. From there, the film slowly unveils sights and sounds that will haunt your memory - and your conscious - long after its 25 minutes are over, demanding what we as a species are going to do about the mess we've made of the planet.

Even without a note of music, the film achieves a dream-like quality and there are scenes that sear themselves into your retinas and shake you to your core. No spoilers but I am holding fast to "dream-like" over "nightmare-inducing," as the film is not just an indictment of our inaction addressing the man-made climate crisis but a rallying cry to do so before it is too late.