Antarctica: On the Edge

Narrated by Tilda Swinton

Antarctica lives in our dreams as the most remote, most forbidding continent on Planet Earth. Yet it is also a fragile place, home to an incredible variety of marine life along its edges: Several species of penguins, tens of thousands of seals, humpback, Minke and killer whales, and dozens of different seabirds including giant, soaring albatrosses.

Antarctica is a big land – all of the United States could easily fit inside its boundaries. It would seem to be invulnerable, cold, covered in ice, dark for nine months of the year.

It is arguably the most stunning, the most breathtaking place on earth. Because of all the ice that covers and surrounds, Antarctica changes every season, every day, every hour; its beauty is never the same twice.

But the nine-hundred-mile long Peninsula that juts out from the continent like a long finger – covered by ice, but warmed by sea on either side — is changing faster than anywhere on the planet, thanks to both warming air and sea temperatures. This warming is impacting both its ice as well as its wildlife. Like its ice and penguins, the few humans who work here each season and the unique treaty that governs the continent are struggling to adapt to the changes.

Traveling to Antarctica from the tip of South America by sailboat and then along the Peninsula by sea kayak, foot, small plane and dive gear, we will take a look at this one-of-a-kind place and bring back a unique perspective on our planet’s most remote land and sea and ice, and the incredible wildlife that call it home.

Though big, remote and covered in ice, Antarctica may not seem fragile. But in fact parts of the continent and its wildlife are at great risk today. Beautiful, unlike anywhere else on the planet, once you’ve visited Antarctica it stays in your blood forever. This film will take you there.