Winter 1942. Beyond the Arctic Circle, on the uninhabited island of Trofimovsk in the Laptev Sea, deported people of different nationalities struggle to survive. This is one of the places to which the Soviet authorities chose to deport large numbers of people from the occupied Baltic region, Finland, Ukraine, and other countries. Between indifference and cruelty, the drastic climate and the destitution, they had to find hope, and a way to stay alive.

The dynamic changes in the Baltic cinematic landscape in recent years are a testimony to the coming of age of documentary animation. The collaborative work of Lithuanian filmmakers Gintarė Valevičiūtė Brazauskienė and Antanas Skučas explores collective trauma, historical memory, and colonial tactics using the tools and poetry of the language of animation. The filmmakers have researched and staged the memories of deportation survivors, symbolically reaching out to their Baltic feature-length counterparts – Estonian director Martti Helde’s In the Crosswind (2014) and Latvian director Viesturs Kairišs’ The Chronicles of Melanie (2016).