Renouncing a commentary spoken by a lector is a deliberate measure well though-out, so that if a viewer wanted to gain more detailed information about the presented species or phenomena, he or she would have to find it in other sources. Our aim was not to provide encyclopeadic knowledge about different species. Neither did we want to overwhelm the viewer with stories of hardship in the mountain conditions, of dangerous predators and their prey, of how severe winters can be here… We did not want to focus on the drama of survival. We aimed at ‘feeling’ and ‘experiencing’ rather than ‘explaining’ from the position of an omniscient commentator. The lector always leads the viewer through a particular type of narration and imposes the way in which the picture is received. We, on the other hand, wanted to make the viewer feel the atmosphere of the place and time in rhythm with natural phenomena.

 The film has developed in time and had a number of versions so far. The festival edition we are presenting now was finished by 2022, which means that its production took thirteen years. If I were to count all days spent on location, the total would exceed four hundred. On numerous occasions none of the shots taken were later included in the film, sometimes only one shot was chosen. On a good day now and then, I managed to collect material for a whole scene.