For bluegrass-obsessed Russians, a trip as arduous as it was unlikely

The sounds of nimble fingers picking at a guitar are, for bluegrass fans at least, awfully familiar, but the setting is not. No one has ever confused the Russian city of Obninski with Nashville. That’s something a group called Bering Strait would like to change.

As detailed in the genial documentary “The Ballad of Bering Strait,” that unlikely locale, once a forbidden-to-foreigners city that was home to the world’s first nuclear power plant, gave birth to a gifted seven-member bluegrass band that, even to experienced ears, has the verve and excitement of the real thing.

Naturally, these high-spirited young strivers want to follow their dream to the real Nashville, where they are sure that wealth, fame and the other trappings of success will follow them. Although their story does have a happy ending, it is by no means that simple.

Documentarian Nina Gilden Seavey, whose last film was a very different historical look at polio in America, followed Bering Strait for two full years of what turned out to be a complex journey that took even longer. As an up-and-down tale of dreams deferred due to record business unpredictability, its is a fine companion piece to the equally grueling story Wilco had to tell in last year’s “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart.”

What makes the story worthwhile is the candor and personality of the band members, in their late teens and early 20s when the film begins and already together for a decade.

Lively, enthusiastic, self-aware and remarkably free of arrogance or special pleading, they are good enough kids to make it understandable why their Job-like manager, Mike Kinnamon, allowed the penniless band to bunk down in his home for years.

Although the entire group gets interview time, three members stand out. Natasha Borzilova is the rebel lead vocalist, determined to do things just because everyone tells her not to, Lydia Salnikova is the thoughtful keyboard artist, and Ilya Toshinsky is the guitar and banjo virtuoso.

Toshinksy’s shown both impressing and dumbfounding one of his professors at his Moscow music conservatory with a slick rendition of the classic “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.” “The banjo,” he says with a straight face, “is not a typical instrument in Russia.”

“Bering Strait” flashes back to the group’s beginning as the brainchild of a bluegrass-obsessed classical music teacher in Obninski. It’s main focus, however, is on the frustrations the musicians face in Nashville, where they perched on the brink of a breakthrough for longer than anyone anticipated.

“Bering Strait” has its share of frustrations for the viewer as well. We never find out what happened to the teacher who founded the group, we never fully understand a shakeup in band personnel, we aren’t told why they play so few gigs, and we never hear so much as a peep about the personal lives of such a young and restless group.

Still, the Bering Straiters are such likable individuals it’s hard not to root for them. As they deal with the music business’ endless disappointments, it’s also hard not to empathize with Lydia’s father, who sagely insists, “Today a musician, tomorrow unemployed.”

‘The Ballad of Bering Strait’

MPAA rating: Unrated

Times guidelines: Unobjectionable

A Documentary Center, GWU and NHK, Japan production, with support from Roland House Hi-Definition Post Production and Access Industries. Director Nina Gilden Seavey. Producer Nina Gilden Seavey. Cinematographer Erich Roland. Editor Jeff Consiglio. Running time: I hour, 41 minutes.