The Lön Rängers – Jessica Oreck on Aatsinki: The Arctic Cowboys

The Skinny: What was it that attracted you to this subject matter?

Jessica Oreck: I love old Westerns. The character of the cowboy is infinitely appealing to me. I love the idea of a man alone in a great expanse of space, in tune with the weather and the needs of his animals. He knows the stars and the landscape almost innately. He is separate from the driving rush of civilization, his time exists for daylight and moonlight. He doesn't have a Blackberry.

I wanted to find that type of person – the modern equivalent of a Randolph Scott character. The main subjects of my film, brothers Aarne and Lasse Aatsinki, are truly of that type.

What was the biggest challenge you faced after you moved to Salla to start filming? How did you overcome it?

Over the course of a year and a half, I spent more than nine months with the two brothers and their families. And I had to start from scratch. I knew nothing about living anywhere but a bustling city and I was a stranger that didn't speak the language. I tried to immerse myself in their lives as fully as possible. I ate dinner with them most nights, babysat their kids, and pretty much stuck to them like glue. They taught me to sew, light a fire, chop wood, cook, train reindeer, and feed sheep. They became my adopted family and my best friends.

Working in the arctic isn't easy. I had nibbles of frostbite, and when my gear would break, there was nowhere to go to replace it. My batteries would die really quickly in the cold, so I kept them in my bra to try to keep them warm after they had been charged. The lenses would also ice and fog when we would move between inside and outside. Because I didn't speak the language, I usually had no clue what was happening and had to be prepared for anything.

But for the most part, I loved it. I was always much, much colder than any of the herders (which they thought was quite comical), but they always took care of me and lent me gear to keep me dry or toasty. And Finns know how to get warm. Taking sauna was the best part of each day. I think, if I ever retire, it will be some place like that...

The slaughter sequence is true to life but it is also hard to watch. How did the reindeer herders ("poromies") feel about you including this particular sequence in the film?

This is why they raise the reindeer – to eat them, to sell them, to use their fur to make clothes and for decoration, to use their antlers and hooves for jewelry. To have excluded that part would be more than a light glossing over – it would be a downright lie.

I think many Americans have a really backwards idea of food production. Every piece of meat you put into your mouth comes from an animal that was once alive. If you can't admit that, then you shouldn't be eating it. It's strange to me that we allow our children to watch excessive violence being done to humans and yet we won't talk to them about where their food comes from.

What's humane, what's authentic, and how we define violence are all intensely complex and deeply cultural questions. But the herders would never have wanted me to leave this out.

What did the experience of directing Arctic Cowboys most change in you?

Impossible to pick just one piece – it was an incredible year. I think I will treasure my friendship with the family for my lifetime. But I also learned so much about living life with intention – that's a lesson I never want to unlearn. And living with the family forced me to reframe my basic ideas about the way we think about and use nature.

While making the film, I was able to see first hand just how complicated the issues facing the herders are (like climate change and predator management laws). These are challenges that aren't limited to reindeer herders but that affect modern, independent farmers around the world. And they were issues that, growing up in a city, I had only ever heard one side of. So we built an online interactive companion to the film that addresses a lot of said challenges. The interactive allows the film to stay intact in the way I originally envisioned it – as a really pure, atmospheric experience – while getting into the nitty-gritty of some of the impossibly large problems that the herders face.