家园 Māja

Home is the story of four generations of a family, descendants of the Golitsyns, a distinguished princely family. After fleeing Russia, they made their way to the United States. For more than two decades they have lived in Alaska.

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Imagine finding a member of the Windsor family hidden away organic gardening on a mountainside in rural Alaska. You’d have questions. This is how director Dmitry Vasyukov found the narrative of his next story in gleaning through pictures, interviews and documents the story of the famous princely Golitsyn family, a once prolific and influential family of Russian nobility that fled the Bolsheviks. What followed over the next four generations was an over a hundred year saga escaping revolution, wars, economic hardship and domestic violence. It is not because of, but despite these experiences, that drive the family members to hold on to their culture and family story. This is a story about family. It is a story about grace, strength and survival. It is the story about how, no matter where we find ourselves, we can build and rebuild a home by holding on to each other.

The story opens with the matriarch of the family, 94-year-old Princess Praskovya. A formidable woman who uses her wit, humor, and sharp mind to keep the memories of the past alive, Princess Praskovya holds the narrative of the whole film. Her memoirs are illustrated with the help of a huge family video and photo archive that traveled with the family. Echoing these historical memoirs is her grandson, Michael, who travels through France as he seeks out the origins of these stories for a book he is writing about his family.

In Normandy, France, he finds the house where his grandmother spent her childhood. In Paris he finds an apartment where, after WWII, his relatives hid a former prisoner, a Soviet officer. Together with Michael we learn about the love story of his grandmother and grandfather – a princess and a homeless child turned petty thief. Their marriage and escape from the KGB in France led them to a quiet life in New England where they raised their daughters, Katherine and Anastasia.

Against the backdrop of this love story, is the love story between Michael＇s parents, Katherine and Jack. In the early years of her marriage and as a young mother she finds herself a victim of an unhappy marriage. In an act of self preservation she is forced, with her family, to hide from her husband and the authorities for many years, living under false names, and fleeing to remote Alaska. Unable to get jobs, they choose to subsist off the land in a remote cabin without running water or electricity. Faced with brutal winters and hard physical labor, they use the landscape to live from: hunting and fishing, foraging and gardening for over a decade. Despite this, the family thrives by once again carrying home within themselves.