TBI Factual Hot Picks: The Arctic, 66.5 Degrees North

Producer: colourFIELD | Distributor: Orange Smarty | Broadcaster: ZDF (Germany) & Arte (France)

From Greenland with its vast ice sheet and calving glaciers, to the frozen wonderland of the Svalbard archipelago, this 3 x 45-minute series explores one of the least touched places on Earth – the Arctic.

With interest in this remote part of our world growing, from tourists to those seeking the vast mineral resources buried beneath the ice, this landscape is changing and may soon be lost forever.

The docuseries meets the scientists working on the front line to hear their latest findings and what these changes will mean to the planet and the people and wildlife who call the Arctic home.

“The summers are becoming longer, there is less sea ice, and the glaciers are retreating. This opens up new possibilities for the discovery of strategic and rare earth minerals needed for the transition to renewable energy,” reveals Freddie Röckenhaus, director and producer of the series, as well as the founder of colourFIELD.

“The world-renowned American glaciologist Jason Box generously shared his newly published data on Greenland’s melting ice sheet which we converted into animation. He is also well known for his groundbreaking research on black ice and how the phenomenon is accelerating melting in the Arctic.”

Röckenhaus tells TBI that the series is “more comprehensive” than other documentaries on the Arctic, covering not only its beauty and the wildlife and people living there, but also the topic of natural resources and how climate change is impacting all of this.

“ColourFIELD visited some amazing locations to make this film. I would say many of the places we accessed have never been captured on film before,” adds the producer-director.

“We filmed in some incredibly inaccessible places for this documentary. We have footage from the middle of the Greenland ice cap at the East Grip International Research Station, which is mostly constructed undernearth the Greenland ice sheet. The only way to get to East Grip is by military aircraft.”

Meanwhile, the crew were the guests of an Inuit community in Canada’s Northwest Territories. “Tuk, as the locals call it, is being swallowed by the sea due to melting permafrost,” says Röckenhaus. “We filmed a team of international researchers working with the locals to find a new location for the town and solutions to the landscape becoming misshapen or lost by the effects of climate change.”