A folk horror documentary—a striking journey into the inner universe of a man trying to live like a lynx
The Finnish version of Werner Herzog's “Grizzly Man”, set to the disquieting music of the Estonian group Puuluup, immerses the viewer into the life of a long-bearded recluse named Hannu. His connection to wild nature is much stronger than that of most people on the planet. Hannu dedicates all his free time to exorcism sessions in the sauna and attempts to capture on forest-installed hidden cameras the elusive and endangered Eurasian lynx. He also encounters other forest-dwelling animals, names them, and learns their joys and sorrows, almost never directly interacting with them. When the carcass of a rare wild cat is discovered near his cabin, Hannu dons a lynx mask, gets down on all fours, and sets out to sniff out the mystery, navigating through swamps and thickets. Alternating between picturesque panoramas of the western Finnish wilderness and lo-fi black-and-white shots from dozens of night vision cameras, Juha Suonpää's surrealist film paints a simultaneously vibrant and ominous picture of the animal world and its interaction with humans. No matter how hard the protagonist strives to live in harmony with nature, he remains the lynx's fiercest enemy and the only species that kills for pleasure.
Original language: Finnish Subtitles: Belarusian | English