On Thin Ice – Rentiere auf dünnem Eis (2020)

Directed by: Henry Mix, Boas Schwarz | 52 minutes | documentary

‘On Thin Ice’ takes us to Siberia, in terms of area a ‘continent within a continent’ where a large part of the soil normally never thaws completely (permafrost). But the area is changing rapidly under the impulse of global climate change. Heat records are being broken. The sea ice melts earlier and earlier in the spring and forms later in the autumn. Previously water-rich rivers largely run dry in the middle of summer, while the ice layer covering the water surface in winter becomes thinner every year. And to make matters worse, the area has been battling persistent wildfires for years, intensifying with each passing year, burning larger swaths of the northern taiga forests to ashes.

No, this film does not paint a happy picture. That actually becomes clear after watching the opening scene, which shows an enormous subsidence in the landscape. With a little imagination, the huge crater looks like a gateway to hell, a gaping maw that has swallowed part of the landscape. What was once permanently frozen ground is now a slippery mud mass that brings all kinds of relics from the distant past to the surface. Think, for example, of the bones of long-extinct prehistoric animals and plants, but also of less harmless primal organisms such as potentially dangerous bacteria and viruses.

In 2016, for example, the melting of a layer of permafrost in Siberia sparked an outbreak of anthrax that killed countless reindeer and left many people in the region ill. In ‘On Thin Ice’, French virologist Jean-Marc Claverie also points out the danger of viruses that have slumbered in the ice for centuries in a state of ‘half sleep’, but can suddenly resurface due to the large melt. There is a good chance that modern humans have no resistance to such viruses, simply because the pathogens come from a time when Homo sapiens did not yet roam the earth.

‘On Thin Ice’ shows the magnitude of the change climate change is bringing to Siberia and sheds light on the serious impact this development is having on the region’s indigenous human population, flora and fauna. Think, for example, of the Nenek, reindeer-keeping nomads who can no longer follow their traditional routes because the ice is too thin in many places. Or starving polar bears, predators that can no longer hunt seals (their staple food) without the pack ice and are therefore forced to visit towns and villages or plunder the breeding grounds of the vulnerable ivory gull en masse. And what about the wild reindeer, who have to make all kinds of detours to complete their annual migration. This means, for example, that the animals are forced to give birth to their calves before they arrive in their nutrient-rich grazing areas.

‘On Thin Ice’ shows above all that the massive melting of the permafrost opens a Pandora’s box: we do not yet know exactly which chain reactions will result from this development, but it is certain that they do not promise much good, especially because the large amounts of methane and carbon dioxide released in the process can also alter global climate and weather patterns. The film is mainly based on scientific insights, larded with beautiful and sometimes disconcerting visual material. The aerial shots of migrating reindeer herds and vast sweeping landscapes are stunning, while the images of starving polar bears, calving tracts and melting glaciers are extremely alarming.

Can we still turn the tide? The business-oriented documentary does not provide an unequivocal answer to this. But there is one telling scene that suggests the worst: we see a young woman in the drab industrial city of Norilsk, laughing, posing for a photo with a polar bear, while the emaciated animal is dying in the background and at a safe distance from the onlookers. of hunger. You can’t imagine the still rampant indifference to the imminent climate disaster much more telling…