First Light
32m · Documentary
Residents of the world’s northernmost town, which is steeped in darkness four months per year, grapple with why they inhabit such a hostile place—and how their unique relationship to the sun changes the meaning of light and darkness within their own lives.
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1922 · ★ 7.1
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Does doctor Jan Terelak belong to an “elitist” group of the most unethical experimenters? The Polish scientist tested boundaries of human mental resilience in extreme conditions of solitude in Antarctica. The starting point for Piotr Jaworski's documentary is the psychologist's journal. The project from forty years ago was focused on studying the mental condition of polar explorers at the Polish station. Men were in the situation of confinement, comparable to a space mission. The film reconstructs these events, referring to the then contemporary context and changes in the perception of science.
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Adrift
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"Adrift" is shot on the arctic island of Spitzbergen and in Norway. It combines time-lapse photography with stop-motion animation of the landscape. Through camera-angles and framing the film gradually dislocates the viewer from a stable base where one loses the sense of scale and grounding.
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Highway to the Arctic
2017 · ★ 7
Every winter for decades, the Northwest Territories, in the Canadian Far North, changes its face. While the landscape is covered with snow and lakes of a thick layer of ice, blocking land transport, ice roads are converted to frozen expanses as far as the eye can see.
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1973
Strong film about trapper Fredrik Rubach who has wintered in Svalbard for 34 seasons.
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Face to Face with the Polar Bear
2005 · ★ 6
Filmmaker Jerome Bouvier spent a year in Spitzberg following the incredible destiny of a polar bear family in a rapidly changing environment. Casting brother and sister twin cubs, this tale focuses on their education and reveals their individual characters.
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2017
Wildlife cameraman Gordon Buchanan travels to the frozen north, deep inside the Arctic Circle, to meet the ancient Sami people and the animals they hold so close - reindeer.
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2022
Two parallel stories are gradually unfolding the everyday life of two very different persons - that of 86-year-old Sara and 7-year-old Mihka - both residing in Guovdageaidnu - Kautokeino, in the middle of the Norwegian arctic tundra, through the drastic change of the arctic seasons and the passage from the long winter’s darkness to the never-ending light of the summer season.
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2020 · ★ 7.5
How in 1959, during the heat of the Cold War, the government of the United States decided to create a secret military base located in the far north of Greenland: Camp Century, almost a real town with roads and houses, a nuclear plant to provide power and silos to house missiles aimed at the Soviet Union.
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Under Thin Ice
2019
Two Canadian experts in underwater filming, Mario Cyr and Jill Heinerth, join forces for the first time to record how Arctic wildlife is adapting to the dramatic effects of climate change.
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Kluane
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Kluane National Park is situated in the Yukon area of northern Canada and is a research paradise for glaciologists, geologists and other scientists. Mountaineers come to scale the impressive heights. Animals are free to roam, protected by stringent legislation. This film reveals many facets of this beautiful park, which has been declared a protected zone by UNESCO.
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