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An homage to humanity, ELSEWHERE is a nuanced portrait of life - fragile and resilient - at the start of the 21st century.

The episodes in Part II are -

July – Ladakh/India
It is Tsewang Dolma’s turn to cook lunch today. She is standing over the fire next to the small Buddhist temple on one of the planes of the step-like mountain slope in the western part of Ladakh, boiling rice in a big pot. People finish their prayers and begin eating, as others, who were busy watering the soil, climb up from the lower terraces to join them. The main conversation still revolves around their previous visit to the most important Buddhist festival of the summer months held at the Hemis Monastery, which they all attended. Even though it is a busy time of year on the fields, nobody wanted to miss out on that trip. Tsewang will walk up the mountain tomorrow to visit the people who have to take care of the cattle at the higher-lying pasture and did not have a chance to attend.

August – Kante Ko Jawun/Russia
The helicopter makes a landing at the shore of the small lake behind Josip’s house. Josip, his son Volodya, and the pilot pack the things they had previously prepared in the helicopter and soon the three take off again. From high up in the air Josip looks out for the most suitable building site for his next house. Josip and his family live on herding reindeer as well as compensations they receive from the oil companies that found his Chanty land to be rich in resources. But since their reindeer have become weaker and suffer from unknown diseases, it seems as if the money could not make up for the damage done to the land, Josip yells out to the pilot over his headset and points out a good landing spot. The bags and gear put down on the ground mark the place for the new building site, which will be worked on soon.

September – Yunnan/China
Gaoruqidú and her sister are very busy preparing food for the pigs, which are the most treasured valuable in their household. Meanwhile, her daughter had cooked lunch for everybody and soon they all gather in the kitchen around the fireplace to enjoy the meal.

Gaoruqidú is the Dabu, the head of the family in the matrilineal culture of the Moso people. The children keep on living at their mother’s house and relationships are organized as “walking marriages,” with the husband visiting his wife at her home overnight and leaving for his place in the morning.

October – Thárros/Sardinia
72-year-old Signor Luigi still earns his money by fishing. Whenever weather permits he and his three sons set out in Luigi’s fishing boat and spend another day fishing and cursing at each other in the most colorful Sardinian swear words.

Senior Luigi lives in one of the very last traditional fisherman’s houses, which are all still not supplied with electric power or water, and have in recent years been replaced with new buildings. Despite these inconveniences, Signor Luigi fights the authorities that want to destroy his dream of being able to live and die in his house.

November – Gitlakdamiks/Canada
When Denis was a boy, he—like all the Nisga’a kids—was sent to a residential school in some far away part of the country. There he was not allowed to talk the Nisga’a language and only rarely had the chance to see his family.

Denis, who lives alone with his three kids on the traditional Nisga’a territory once more, tries hard to relearn his parents’ language and to become versed in the Nisga’a tradition again, which was taken away from him by force. He says that people like him are called “apple Indians”: Red outside, but inside white.

December - Woleai/Micronesia
Maria and Francisco Mairal are living on the Woleai Atoll, which consists of a handful of small coral reef islands, of which only one is permanently inhabited by a small community of 200 people.

Equipped with a school, a church, a small airstrip and three or four cars, the “outer islanders” live their lives largely unaffected by anything going on in the world, since the world is far away—it takes three hours by plane to reach Yap, the closest major island, and that’s not very much of the world either.

Every Christmas, the U.S. coastguard arrives with a warplane for the “Christmas drop”—some big boxes filled with all kinds of goods, which nobody on the outer island really needs, but U.S. citizens are too ashamed to throw away. These boxes are fixed with parachutes and are dropped out of the plane carefully; the only things the outer islanders really use are the parachutes themselves, as they make good mosquito nets.