The Trans-Siberian gas pipeline, built in 1983, connected gas supplies in Siberia with consumers in Europe. Ukrainian-born documentarist Vitaly Mansky’s perceptive and evocative film follows its course through Russia to the Czech Republic and Germany. But the pipeline itself only provides the framework for portraits of scenes from everyday life. Fishing in a frozen Siberian river, a wedding in Khabarovsk, old men looking back to Stalinist ideals and a church mass in a disused rail car are just some of the episodes that provide insights into a provincial Russia that has changed little, the sale of energy providing little benefit to the people who live alongside its source. But however absurd and unsettling the parallel images of wealth and poverty, the film is at the same time a portrait of the individuality of ordinary people. Mansky’s careful and perceptive approach demonstrates a fundamental respect for the people he is filming.