Renato Serrano Intro for Life of Ivanna (2021) | IU Cinema | Oct. 2022

On Oct. 21, 2022, IU Cinema screened Life of Ivanna as part of the series Portraits in Permafrost: Cinema of the Russian Arctic, curated by IU's Russian Studies Workshop. The film was preceded by a special virtual introduction from filmmaker Renato Serrano.
Renato Serrano’s Life of Ivanna shadows a young single mother with five children inhabiting a nomadic sleigh cabin in the Russian tundra. Although the audience sees the Nenets woman attending to all her children’s needs and confidently heading her reindeer sleigh through the barely distinguishable landscape, Ivanna cannot sustain this life. Life of Ivanna provides us with an intimate representation of a family at the crossroads of isolation and inclusion, of tradition and adaptation, of loss and survival.