Eureka Entertainment will release The White Reindeer, a beautiful and haunting folk tale based on Lapland mythology, for the very first time in the UK as part of its The Masters of Cinema Series.
The “definitive” Dual Format (Blu-ray & DVD) edition on 8 April 2019 will be presented from a new 4K restoration and available with a Limited Edition slipcase.
The directorial debut of Finnish cinematographer Erik Blomberg, The White Reindeer is one of world cinema’s criminally under-seen masterpieces.
A vampiric fairy-tale set amongst the starkly beautiful fells of Finnish Lapland, Blomberg combines an almost documentary filming style with avant-garde experimentation to produce a dreamy art-house horror film without compare.
A newly-married young woman, Pirita (Mirjami Kuosmanen), becomes frustrated and lonely as her husband, a reindeer herder for a small Arctic village, spends much of his time away from home in devotion to his work. Desperate for affection, she visits a shaman who offers a potion that makes her an irresistible object of desire, but there is a terrible cost. Pirita becomes a bloodthirsty shapeshifter who lures men out into the barren wilderness where she consumes them.
With its portrayals of gender inequality, societal pressures and sexual anxiety (represented through animal transformation, echoes of Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People…), The White Reindeer is a timeless classic that deserves to be rediscovered and recognised as a defining film in the horror and fantasy genres.
DUAL FORMAT SPECIAL FEATURES
- Limited Edition O Card Slipcase [2000 copies ONLY]
- 1080p presentation on Blu-ray from a 4K restoration completed in 2017 by the National Audio-visual Institute of Finland
- LPCM audio (original mono presentation)
- Optional English subtitles
- Feature Length Audio Commentary by critic and film historian Kat Ellinger
- Religion, Pleasure, and Punishment: The Portrayal of Witches in Nordic Cinema – a new and exclusive video essay by film journalist and writer Amy Simmons
- With The Reindeer – Erik Blomberg’s 1947 documentary short
- Colour Test Footage
- 1952 Jussi Awards Ceremony featurette
- Reversible Sleeve
- PLUS: A collector’s booklet featuring new writing by film critic and writer Alexandra Heller Nichols and journalist Philip Kemp
