Silent Snow (2011)

Directed by: Jan van den Berg, Pipaluk Knudsen-Ostermann | 75 minutes | documentary

At first glance, the vast and icy expanses of the Arctic are a textbook example of the relatively untouched wildness of nature that can still be found in some parts of the globe. But looks are deceiving. Behind the idyll of imposing icebergs, hunting polar bears, touching seals, well-fed walruses and peacefully swimming whales lies a grim reality. Research has shown that many of the animals living in the Arctic have record levels of toxic substances in their bodies. Since marine mammals and predatory fish are at the top of the food chain, all the toxins that are in the individual links of this cycle accumulate in their bodies. Seals, walruses and whales, for example, store the toxins in their thick layer of fat, the fish in their flesh. As a result, the Inuit, who still rely almost exclusively on fish and the meat of marine mammals for their daily food needs, also ingest this chemical junk en masse. The consequences are often serious: brain disorders and a lower IQ, a weakening of the immune system and a spectacular increase in various cancer types are ailments that are increasingly showing up in Inuit communities. “Ironically enough, we suffer the most from the effects of pollution and climate change, while we barely contribute to it ourselves”, says narrator Pipaluk Knudsen-Ostermann at the beginning of the documentary ‘Silent Snow’.

What follows is a journey through various places on earth where toxic pesticides such as DDT – despite the formal, worldwide ban that saw the light of the Stockholm Convention – are still happily injected into the atmosphere. Knudsen-Ostermann, for example, travels to East Africa, where DDT is apparently still regularly used as an antimalarial agent in countries such as Kenya and Uganda. Shockingly, this choice is often made by corrupt politicians who, without popular consultation, make a deal with the profit-hungry producers of such toxins. In India too, it appears that dubious pesticides and toxic waste from large chemical plants are still a major problem and that regional governments often prioritize money and jobs over the health of their own population. The final leg of the documentary takes Knudsen-Ostermann to Costa Rica, where the narrator meets some plantation workers who were exposed for years to the toxic pesticide Nemagόn, a substance long used in the banana industry.

With ‘Silent Snow’, the Dutchman Jan van den Berg has certainly delivered a very meaningful documentary. The atmospheric images of the Arctic region and the Central American rainforests in particular are at times breathtakingly beautiful, while the documentary also succeeds with verve in confronting an important, but often underestimated and overlooked environmental problem. Using eye-watering images and from the point of view of the often voiceless victims, ‘Silent Snow’ shows that environmental treaties only make sense if they are respected on a global scale. Because many toxins eventually end up thousands of kilometers from their place of origin in other ecosystems, carried by the water or the wind. In a way, ‘Silent Snow’ is a beautifully filmed travel document, but the film is also a powerful call to the viewer to take action and make serious efforts to save our unfortunately often fragile planet from the scourge of greed and irresponsibility. Because it is of course crazy that especially natural peoples and inhabitants of third world countries are hit hardest by the excesses of ecological mismanagement in the rich and industrialized countries.

Although ‘Silent Snow’ sometimes goes a bit too far in romanticizing the way of life of the Inuit and natural peoples on other continents, the film is a sincere, often melancholy and valuable plea for a healthier and fairer world.