2025 Polar Film Festival
Filmmaker Mini-Blogs
Welcome to our 2025 Polar Film Fest Mini Blog Series,
where filmmakers have a chance to share their thoughts and experiences from the film-making process.
Be sure to check out all the films being showcased here!
From the left: 1) Producer, director and founder of the "Күн оҕолоро" (Children of the Sun) documentary studio - Sardaana Barabanova, 2) Diana Khudaeva - documentary director, 3) Mikhail Kardashevskiy - cinematographer. Anabar ulus (county), Republic of Sakha, February 2016
What inspired you to create your film?
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I am an Indigenous documentarian from the Republic of Sakha, located in the Arctic region of Russia. As a filmmaker, I began by creating movies that preserve our culture. These films present our own gaze on ourselves—how we see our traditions, struggles, and identity. For many years, Indigenous peoples have been denied the opportunity to represent themselves authentically. This is no secret. That is why I feel a profound responsibility to tell our stories through our lens. This mission—to reclaim our narrative—is what drives and inspires me.
How can film be used to educate the public about the Polar and Alpine regions?
In documentary film, it is very difficult for the camera to lie or embellish anything. Whether you want it or not, life itself gets into the frame. Interior, exterior. Therefore, through documentary film, people see the lives of others and I hope they try to understand each other.
What is your most memorable experience from making your film?
We filmed in the Arctic. That means very difficult weather conditions. It's negative 50°C, and you are filming. Hour by hour. Once, we drove from one location to another in such conditions for 24 hours on a snowmobile under the open sky. We got caught in a blizzard, and wolves chased us. It's very hard filming in the Arctic.
Perspectives from Stella Papadopoulou
Filming the scientists working on the ice during ARTofMELT expedition. Photo Credits: Paul Zieger
What inspired you to create your film?
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The Arctic is changing faster than anywhere else on the planet, yet most people will never set foot there. When my colleague Gunnar and I first learned about the ARTofMELT expedition— one of the earliest research expeditions ever to attempt to reach the Arctic at this time of year—we knew it was a story that had to be told. The team was venturing into largely uncharted territory, studying the crucial but still poorly understood process of sea ice melt. We wanted to capture not just the science, but the emotional and human side of what such a research quest means. The intersection of data and storytelling became the heart of this film.
How can film be used to educate the public about the Polar and Alpine regions?
Film has the power to transport people to places they might never visit, making distant realities feel personal and urgent. In the case of the Arctic regions, visuals are incredibly powerful: floating ice, vast landscapes, and the resilience of researchers in extreme conditions all create a visceral impact. The Arctic ice melt is still very little understood, and by blending scientific knowledge with cinematic storytelling, film can bridge the gap between complex research and public understanding, sparking conversations and action in ways that reports and statistics often cannot.
What is your most memorable experience from making your film?
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One moment stands out above all. We were on the ice, surrounded by a seemingly endless white expanse when the researchers deployed their instruments into the sea ice. The contrast of colours was breathtaking. But what struck me most was the silence—except for the occasional crack of shifting ice. It was a humbling moment, a reminder of the fragility and beauty of this environment. During filming, I realized how much we take for granted about the Arctic, and how urgent it is to tell its stories.
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Is there anything else about your film or experience that you would like to share?
One of the most rewarding aspects of making this film was the collaboration between scientists and filmmakers. Our perspectives complemented each other in unexpected ways, revealing that science isn’t just about numbers, and art isn’t just about emotion—they both seek to make sense of the world. We hope this film inspires people to see the Arctic not just as a distant, frozen place, but as a dynamic, living system that connects us all.
Perspectives from Huw James
Dr. Juliette Becquet stands on Mt Adams and looks out over the Columbia River Basin
What inspired you to create your film?
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We often talk about how glaciers are melting but all the focus is on these huge water batteries and a lot less on their impact downstream. We really wanted to make a film that showed what is happening to people downstream of glaciers when they melt and eventually disappear.
How can film be used to educate the public about the Polar and Alpine regions?
The biggest changes due to climate change is happening in our most sensitive regions. But they are much less populated than the densely populated urban areas that we want to get this message to. Downstream aims to show that even if you dont live in an alpine or polar region, the melting of our cryosphere still impacts us all.
What is your most memorable experience from making your film?
Whilst on top of Mt. Adams, the second highest mountain in Washington, we could see all the water towers around. Mt. Rainier, Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Hood. It really puts into perspective that we get a lot of our water from the snow fall and melt from these huge water batteries across the world. The drop in snow fall along with the melting of glaciers means that their water output will be reduced going forward.
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Is there anything else about your film or experience that you would like to share?
This film is set on three continents with over 10 people who all have different lives and jobs. But everyone is facing the same issues. We heard the same problems time and again. Climate change is going to be a unique problem for every individual but the large-scale issues are very much the same worldwide.
Perspectives from Sarah Bachinger
The final icy remains of a fragment of the Breiðamerkurjökull glacier as it melts on a black sand beach on it's way into the ocean
What inspired you to create your film?
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My film was inspired by my first encounters with glaciers after a visit to Iceland in 2022. Previous to this trip, I had been interested in glaciers, and understood through research for some of my prior art projects, the dangers they were facing in our rapidly warming world. But standing in front of them, witnessing them through sight, sound, smell and touch was a completely life changing experience. The range of emotions and the immediate deep connection with them that formed after being in their presence, was something unexpected. To understand and grasp both their strength and fragility inspired the desire to learn more about not only the glaciers themselves, but the human and more-than-human communities around them, and that depend on them for various reasons, as well as the current threats that they are facing. Returning from that trip, and bringing home a bout of Covid with me, allowed me the time to sit and marinate in my experience with the glaciers, and the newfound sense of anxiety and mourning for their loss and what that ultimately means for this planet. Elegy For A Glacier was born from this new landscape of emotion that I was experiencing, and my first foray into the worlds of climate anxiety and utilizing filmmaking as a means of expression and storytelling. My work has always revolved around connecting the gaps and recognizing the similarities between science and art, and this new form of creating allows for new pathways to bring emotion into the conversations of climate change, glacier loss and changes in our cryosphere - tapping into the human emotional landscape to work towards inspiring deeper connections with nature with the hopes of fostering a greater sense of stewardship amongst communities and individuals to better protect our planet.
How can film be used to educate the public about the Polar and Alpine regions?
I hope that Elegy For A Glacier and the subsequent projects that are in the works and inspired by this film, can help to offer a glimpse into the power of connecting with the unique aspects of our Polar and Alpine regions, as well as offering a pathway towards reflection on the importance of addressing and finding creative ways to express our own individual and collective climate grief, anxiety and mourning.
What is your most memorable experience from making your film?
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My most memorable experience surrounding this film are recalling the moments of complete awe stemming from my experience of being in the presence of these glaciers for the first time. From bearing witness to the individual and unique characteristics of each glacier, to understanding and seeing the layers of time compressed in the ice, and recognizing the memories and history they hold - and, all that is lost as they continue to melt away. To hear the sounds they make as they melt and move and to sense their power in the raw land that is exposed, carved from the weight of their being as they slide across the earth.
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But most importantly, greatest gift I received from my time with these glaciers, was the sense of feeling humbled and connected in their presence - the understanding that we are deeply intertwined despite the geographical distance between us - and the recognition that as small as I am in comparison to these icy giants, I hold the responsibility of being a caretaker, of utilizing my creativity as a vessel of reciprocity to help protect and preserve their presence on our planet.
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Is there anything else about your film or experience that you would like to share?
"Elegy For A Glacier" has become a catalyst project and is evolving into various creative forms that continue to explore the topics of anticipatory grief/mourning and climate anxiety as a means and method of fostering connection with and stewardship for our more-than-human kin.
Though the initial concepts for this work were born from personal emotional reflection and direct experience, my projects are always deeply embedded in research, analytics and working towards humanizing data in a way that bridges science and art – while considering individual and communal emotion responses to the climate crises and personal connection to place and our interwoven connections to more-than-human kin.
ÈLÈGÄ’[S] is transforming into an experimental documentary and public art project titled "With The Meltwaters, So Too We Go".
"With The Meltwaters, So Too We Go" is an experimental documentary exploring the profound emotional terrain of communities across the Northeastern & Northwestern US, Subarctic, Nordic, and Alpine regions, where the warming winters and dwindling ice and snow expose the raw edges of climate grief and anxiety. Through personal stories and evocative visuals, the film reveals how anticipatory mourning, cultural erosion, and resilience arise as people confront a changing landscape, inviting a shared call to steward the fragile ecosystems we risk losing.
The public art aspects of this work are aimed at fostering awareness through multi-generational communal projects that share in collective recollection, making, ritual and grieving for the landscapes that we live in and with, in an effort to re-connect with them to better protect them before they are destroyed.
This work explores themes of anticipated loss, collective mourning, sense of place, embedded histories and imagined futures, kinship, reverence and local ecological stewardship.
More about this film and the communal projects that will be shared with it can be found at https://dirtpicturestudio.com/with-the-meltwaters-so-too-we-go/ and https://sebachinger.com/with-the-meltwaters/
Perspectives from Annukka Pekkarinen
While filming I also got to do occasional research assistant jobs, here recording some positions for cross-sections through the river ice with the fluvial geomorphology scientist Linnea Blåfield.
What inspired you to create your film?
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I have always enjoyed talking to peope who have a passion in a particular topic or field of research. Most of us have that one thing in the world that we are endlessly fascinated about - the scientists have made their career out of it, and that is a passion worth documenting.
How can film be used to educate the public about the Polar and Alpine regions?
Our film is about the somewhat forgotten mid-latitudes: The boreal zone that is not quite Arctic - but almost. It is not necessarily alpine or mountainous but raw and incredibly beautiful, so remote that most people consider it as the Northern backcountry, a region that is highly threatened by climate change. Our film is capturing that landscape, the water that runs through it and the scientists who study it.
What is your most memorable experience from making your film?
Filming the coastal research part of the film, with the endless sleet, was quite fun - this was really unexpectedly bad weather for a mid-November day in Finland, nobody expected that. Filming equipment and the microphones suffered a little from being soaking wet but scientists and the research technicians of the Finnish research station we like ”ohhh this is just a usual wednesday out here.”
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Is there anything else about your film or experience that you would like to share?
Being able to join the field research campaigns has been a big highlight for me. It has been inspiring to follow the fieldwork, the challenges faced and the problem solving skills of the research teams to get the scientific results.
Perspectives from Idun Isdrake
Aerial dance with ice, performer Idun Isdrake, camera and zodiac operators Annette Wagner, Lynne Allen, Rubin.
What inspired you to create your film?
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My homelands and ancient stories are shaped by ice, I have filmed glaciers and other ice creatures for decades and feel a deep kinship with them. I will never forget my first close up encounters with glaciers while studying geology and archaeology in 2005-6. Since then, the shape of glaciers that I have revisited several times has changed in alarming ways. Sharing my work in a medium that is accessible to many people is a way to contribute to a decrease in harmful human behaviours.
How can film be used to educate the public about the Polar and Alpine regions?
It is important that knowledge is shared in diverse and accessible ways, in places that reach large, mainstream audiences. Audiovisual and interactive arts are multimodal and easier for many to grasp than academic papers and statistics. Change can not happen when research and ancient knowledges are kept behind closed doors or are silenced by power structures. At the same time there are problematic political interests, which is very perceptible in places like Svalbard for example, that makes communication complicated. Film has been used as propaganda, which highlights how important independent filmmaking is, as well as co-creation across disciplines and methods. Furthermore, educational media often hold too low quality to reach a mainstream audience, while artistic media often has too little funding to produce the level of experiences that people are used to today. Funding has to be increased for collaborative media production with shared, situated and transparent goals. Imagine a Fortnite (game world with millions of players globally) based on polar research, or a CERN in the shape of an open game world.
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What is your most memorable experience from making your film?
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Making an aerial dance performance with ice, can not remember the last time I noticed myself being that happy and filled with gratitude, and I smile every time I see the scars on my feet from mild frostbites. I did not include it in the film though, as I wanted the film to feature audio and visuals from the glaciers, not any humans. But there might be another film coming up… about a cyborg on an iceberg, but that is another story.
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Is there anything else about your film or experience that you would like to share?
Yes, I want to make that game world for millions of players, based on polar research, and more films. I have kind of started already… So if anyone out there would like to join, please get in touch.