U YEN

Denis Shably | Russia | 2022 | 26’ | OmeU

»U YEN« is a Mari band consisting of eight young musicians who play lively ethno-punk in Yoshkar-Ola, the capital of the Russian republic of Mari El, and beyond the city limits. The special thing about the band is that in their search for a new sound, they combine punk and electronic beats with folk music from the region and its traditional instruments. All the members are talented and flamboyant, but otherwise very different from each other. What unites them all is a common idea: to preserve and (re-)popularize Mari culture through their art. But is Mari culture even ready for this experiment?

Mari El is located in the European east of the multi-ethnic state of Russia, and Mari is an ethnic group with its own language, which is assigned to the Volga-Finnish languages, but is spoken by fewer and fewer people and is therefore threatened with extinction – and with it an entire culture. But when you see the dedication with which the young men and women of U Yen go about their work, the ingenuity with which they communicate language and culture against a dominant Russifying environment, you feel a little less anxious again. There is more than enough of this positive energy in the film: It’s fast-paced, colorful, funny and full to bursting, so that it’s hard to believe that it’s only so short).