Far North

Far North is a 2008 thriller set in the Arctic tundra, where a woman named Saiva lives in isolation with Anja, the girl she raised from infancy. The two survive by hunting and by avoiding other people altogether, bound together by years of solitude and mutual dependence. Their routine is broken when they find Loki, a soldier who has collapsed in the snow, close to death. Despite her distrust of strangers, Saiva takes him in and nurses him back to health. As he recovers, both women are drawn to him, and the tension between them unsettles the life they had built together, setting the stage for violence and betrayal.

Asif Kapadia directed the film, working from a screenplay he wrote with Tim Miller. It followed Kapadia's The Return and preceded the documentaries Senna and Amy that later defined his career. Michelle Yeoh plays Saiva, with Michelle Krusiec as Anja and Sean Bean as Loki. The cast also includes Gary Pillai, Bjarne Østerud and Sven Henriksen. The production was a British, American and French co-production.

The film runs 89 minutes and was released in October 2008. Reception from viewers has been moderate: on IMDb it holds a rating of 6.1/10 from around 3,400 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 6/10 from a much smaller pool of 56 votes. The two scores are close, indicating a broadly comparable, if unenthusiastic, response from each audience.