Kultajoki – Gold River

Not a single gramwithout passion

From Bernd A. Bartusevics und Annett Pée, music by Pekka Kumpulainen

Finland, 2012

During the summer of 1868, when the first gold was found on the river banks of Ivalojoki River, Northern Finnish Lapland was just a wilderness. Nomadic Samì traveled with their reindeers through the arctic taiga and tundra. For the few, who ventured to reach the 250 km distant gold fields the extreme climatic conditions were a though test. But in 1870 already 500 men worked on Ivalojoki with the dream of finding there true and only bonanza.

Even today the river is mostly cut off from civilization. There are still just few gold washers, doing this hard work in the short arctic summer. Some of them are adventurers and freaks. Serious prospectors, who value life in nature, are rare. They are looking for an alternative to modern life with its conveniences, distractions and dependencies.
This film is about the gold rush in Lapland and a female photographer in the search of them who still seeking for Gold on the arctic river. Her romantic ideas of the gold panning in warm midsummer nights will soon be overtaken by the harsh reality of the gold washers’ life on the rivers banks. This is a portrait about remarkable personalities in a rugged landscape of wild beauty.