From Berlinale 2010...
“I am Ambasi Vera’s daughter. Russians call me Nadezhda. My real name is Neko. I am the last in the line of Veras.”
Neko is the last hope in her Siberian clan, part of the Nenet people who are still living off the land and not integrated into the 1980's Soviet society. She's grown up in a world where nature is revered and respected, home is a tent and tundra the floor, salmon is food, and a reindeer costs 100 salmon. "How to know 100 salmon," she asks her father. "You have ten fingers, make ten piles of ten salmon each, that is the number 100 you need to buy a reindeer." She is named by the eldest shaman as the future shaman, and she is the last of her family. "Pity you weren't a boy. Why weren't you a boy?"
Her mother has integrated into the "greater" Soviet society and returns to rip Neko from the family that has always cared for her, to place her in a Soviet boarding school where she can have the benefit of learning Russian and communism, and forget how to fish and make clothes from animal hydes.
The film alternates between the documentary of real-life Neko (whose Soviet name became Nadezhda Pyrerko) in modern day Russia, with dramatized reenactment of her youth, based also on co-writer/co-director Anastasia Lapsui's own memories.
I could begin to identify with her plight, having been placed for 10 weeks into a French school without prior knowledge of French language or culture, and also being a pagan/nature worshipper whom few if any of my friends and family have ever understood as such. Just a different culture.
So, Neko's clan is basically lost to globalization, but other clans of the Nenet people live on (for now) in Siberia, still trying to avoid displacement by hungry Russian oil companies.
The theatre was full mostly of young children from school excursions, off to learn about children in other cultures and ask questions of the writers/directors after the viewing, at this world premier of the film.
http://www.berlinale.de/en/programm/berlinale_programm/datenblatt.php?film_id=20103154
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1380232/
I had high expectations and some were let down, but a good film overall. The film did an excellent job portraying the emotional immaturity and insecurity of certain soldiers. (Immaturity sounds judgmental but that is not how I mean it, remember that military service in Israel as in many countries is mandatory for all 18 year olds, whether they want to volunteer for war or not.) Film does a good job showing the chaos of multiple points of view--young reluctant flagrantly disrespectful soldiers, older macho war heroes, profiteerers, prisoners of war, tortured civilians--without being a tour of bravado and glory and heroism as would be seen in most US war films or any paltry Tom Cruise ditty. This chaos of multiplicity was strengthened by the film's use of dialogue in multiple languages, when no individual could speak all. Only the viewer had the luxury of translated subtitles and the "full view". 
My main criticism of the film was from a technical stand-point. Oftentimes the camera takes the POV of the artilleryman, who is shaking with fear on his first day of war, terrorized with the notion of killing (even an enemy aiming at him with a gun), and forever plagued with his acts after making his first kill. The camera looks down the trigger view ("periscope"?) and the viewer of the film becomes the viewer and artilleryman, shocked with the scenes of war. This was all a great idea, but the beef I have is that the camera/artilleryman kept recentering his view to get the perfect "money shot" of what he was looking at (destroyed buildings, half-blown up soldiers/civilians, even a fellow soldier backing into an alley to take a piss.) All angles the soldier in shock would find himself locked into, including the urinating colleague who of course quickly gestures to him to mind his own business and look away. But all jarringly and irrevocably lost when the camera re-became a camera and constantly recentered to get "the money shot", which a shocked barely adult soldier would not do. That gave the film a dogmatic edge, as if to teach of the atrocities of war rather than let the truth be just that, flawed images of horror. So close to being a brilliant essay in "show, don't tell," that ended up "tell, tell, tell." Still, I am left with the raw youngness of these soldiers, their being thoroughly unable to comprehend their mission emotionally, and the consequences of getting lost and losing control in war.
The French certainly have a different concept of a hero than Americans, made especially poignant in a film naming him hero and yet spending a significant percentage of the film showing his faults... but he did make wrecklessness, unkemptliness, and scandal such beautiful statements, worthy of Baudelaire. I loved seeing his imaginary double (in the shape of a giant louse ((NB: "Élisa")) ) and how a little Jewish boy could mock the nazis and get away with it. Both in the Nazi occupation of Paris and later in a singing career ("On va danser le Nazi-rock.") 
