Lost in the White Sea, some 37 miles away off the Karelia coast, lies the Solovetsky Archipelago (Solovki), often described as the Northern Athos. Solovki islands are home to one of the northernmost Russian Orthodox monasteries - the Solovetsky Savior Transfiguration monastery.

The story of Solovki, in which Faith closely entwines with courage and pain, is now presented in a new documentary titled “The Holy Archipelago”, featuring some of the most outstanding camera work ever done in the ancient monastery.

According to its authors, "Holy Archipelago" is a reflection on a deeper nature of life, faith, hope and love. This is the first large-scale documentary in modern Russia on a spiritual and religious issues. It took the crew two years to shoot this film. 

The Solovetsky Savior Transfiguration monastery, founded in 1436 is one of the best-known and revered monasteries in Russia.  The Solovki chronicles contain the names of 50 Saints who used to live and pray here, all the way up to 1920, when Bolsheviks closed the monastery down to build the Solovetsky special forced labor camp (SLON) on the monastery grounds. Over the 16 years of its operation, tens of thousands of prisoners passed through the Solovki prisons, including members of nobility and intellectuals, outstanding academics, military, peasants, writers, artists, and poets, as well as many Church hierarchs, clergymen and monastics of the Russian Orthodox Church, as well as Orthodox laity who suffered for the faith of Christ.  

Solovki camp was closed in 1939, and in 1988, the remains of monastery were returned to the Russian Orthodox Church. Now the place has regained its status as a famous tourist and pilgrimage destination. 

"There are special sites on planet Earth, which are literally precious", says film director Sergei Debizhev. – These sites is what I am interested in, I see them as the centers of civilization impulses. Solovki is one of these, it’s a most powerful spiritual and religious center of meanings and power. The axis of the world goes right through it. Here's the trailer of the new documentary.