Apö Karim, Ambassadeur de l'Himalaya

Rentiere auf dünnem Eis

Climate change has reached the indigenous Nenets people in the north of Siberia. The nomads' herds of reindeer move on thin ice. The warming in the Russian Arctic is becoming dramatically visible. Huge craters open in the thawing permafrost and expose dangerous viruses and bacteria. Forest floors dry out and the taiga catches on fire. The pack ice off the coast is melting and depriving polar bears of their habitat so that they approach human settlements in their desperation. The changes in the nature of the Arctic Circle combine with the measurements of researchers and observations of the indigenous people to form a disturbing overall picture: In the Russian Arctic, Pandora's box has been opened! The film team had the chance to shoot in regions that were been restricted areas for decades. The documentary shows in impressive and depressing images already existing effects, phenomena and ominous interlinkages of global warming.

Rasputin: Mord am Zarenhof

St. Petersburg, Russia, December 30th, 1916. Grigori Rasputin is assassinated. The story of the humble peasant who became the most influential adviser to czarina Alexandra Feodorovna, wife of the last czar, Nicholas II Romanov.

Target... Earth?

Really strange documentary of Wheeler Dixon production quality on the Tunguska Event and the possibility of it happening again causing an apocalypse (basically a meteor scare film) sprinkled with UFO conspiracy kooks, and other 'professionals', riddled with stock footage of all kinds, freaky moog music and sound fx, a Dr. Who rip-off end theme, Victor Buono as Homer the Archivist, a philosophical history recorder in a space ship with a HAL 9000 type talking computer named Ino, there's also another space ship with Egyptian looking aliens girls with pasties and see-thru blouses.

Le Cavalier mongol

In the Darhat valley in northern Mongolia, the horses of nomadic tribes are stolen by bandits who then sell them to Russian slaughterhouses. Shukhert, a brave horseman, relentlessly pursues them through the Mongolian taiga, bordering Siberia.

Рай

In 2021, an extreme heatwave gave rise to huge wildfires in the vast subarctic forests of Sakha, a northeastern republic in Siberia. The village of Shologon lies in this taiga landscape, shrouded in orange smoke and black ash. The forest is burning and the flames are approaching fast.

Tawai: A Voice from the Forest

Explorer Bruce Parry visits nomadic tribes in Borneo and the Amazon in hope to better understand humanity's changing relationship with the world around us.

Здорово и вечно

The film details the early years of the legendary Siberian Punk/Rock group 'Гражданская Оборона' (Grazhdanskaya Oborona), and its frontman, Egor Letov.

A fehér szarvas

Imagine one of the most remote wildernesses in the world. Granddaughter Masha and Vladimir, the protagonists of this story from Central Siberia try the impossible to keep their nomadic traditions alive.

Beyond the White

In Northern Russia, a few dozen people still live in their traditional houses surrounded by water, stone, and sand. Cut off from vital infrastructure, almost forgotten by regional governance, these people have to cope with their everyday struggles.

G. J. Ramstedtin maailma

At the turn of the 19th and 20th century Finnish philologist G. J. Ramstedt travelled around Mongolia and Central-Asia. In this documentary Ramstedt’s memoirs are heard in the modern day setting, where tradition is replaced with hunger for money, and deserts give way to cities.

Mawson: Life and Death in Antarctica

The Douglas Mawson Antarctic Expedition of 1912 is considered one of the most amazing feats of endurance of all time. Although his two companions perished, Douglas Mawson survived, but how? In a bold historical experiment, scientist and adventurer Tim Jarvis is retracing the gruelling experience, with the same meagre rations, primitive clothing and equipment to uncover what happened to Mawson physically — and mentally — as a man hanging on the precipice of life and death.

Chasseurs de Mammouths

Since the ban on elephant hunting, Russia has had a monopoly on the ivory trade. But this ivory comes from mammoths, whose tusks, skeletons and sometimes frozen bodies are regularly found in the frozen ground of Siberia. According to estimates by some scientists, it could contain the remains of several million mammoths! eternal ice. Their goal: to discover the frozen remains of mammoths trapped in the permafrost. Using derisory means, they dig the frozen ground from which they extract bones, teeth, skulls... and above all, precious mammoth tusks. Ivory - the white gold of the tundra - will sell for over $50 a kilo. A total market appears at $2.5 million, with hubs in Moscow and Hong Kong.

Das Rätsel von Tunguska

At 7:14 am on 30 June 1908, the largest explosion recorded in human history to date reverberated throughout our planet. The force of the explosion was two thousand times that of the Hiroshima bomb. A woodland area the size of Luxembourg was eradicated in the Siberian taiga. This incident is recorded in history books as the Tunguska catastrophe. To this day, internationally renowned scientists of various disciplines argue about the causes of this disastrous explosion. The documentary discusses the latest and most controversial insights of these leading scientists. It identifies the reasons why Tunguska has evolved into a phenomenon and points out the curious results produced by this mythical event in culture and economy.

Phantoms of the Sierra Madre

A Danish writer travels to Mexico with the purpose of locating a mysterious Apache tribe that fervently seeks to remain in obscurity.

Happy People: A Year in the Taiga

In the center of the story is the life of the indigenous people of the village Bakhtia at the river Yenisei in the Siberian Taiga. The camera follows the protagonists in the village over a period of a year. The natives, whose daily routines have barely changed over the last centuries, keep living their lives according to their own cultural traditions.

Shackleton's Captain

In 1914 Sir Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans Antarctic Expedition headed for the South Pole and disaster. Shackleton's Captain reveals the truth behind the spectacular survival of all the crew and shows how one man's extraordinary skill and unsung heroism made it possible: Frank Worsley, Captain of the expedition ship, Endurance.

East of Paradise

Filmmaker Lech Kowalski explores his belief that struggle is "the epitome of living" in this documentary which compares the wildly different life experiences of himself and his mother. Kowalski's mother came of age in Poland during the early stages of World War II, and after failed attempts to outrun both Nazi and Russian forces she and her family were sent to a Soviet concentration camp, where inmates were tortured, mistreated, and starved to the point where some ate their own lice in a desperate struggle to survive. Kowalski also depicts his own self-inflicted season in hell during his years on the New York City punk rock scene as he wallowed in the sordid underbelly of drug addiction, pornography, prostitution, and streetwise decadence. On both stories, Kowalski finds a message of hope and strength in the midst of almost certain peril.

Explorer

Sir Ranulph Fiennes is credited as being the World’s Greatest Living Explorer. Among his extraordinary achievements, he was the first to circumnavigate the world from pole to pole, crossed the Antarctic on foot, broke countless world records, and discovered a lost city in Arabia. He has travelled to the most dangerous places on Earth, lost half his fingers to frostbite, raised millions of pounds for charity and was nearly cast as James Bond. But who is the man who prefers to be known as just ‘Ran’?

The Strait Guys

THE STRAIT GUYS follows Czech-born mining engineer, George, and his fast-talking protégé, Scott, along the proposed route of the InterContinental Railway through Alaska, to the Bering Strait and onward to Russia. The “Strait Guys” endeavor to convince international governments, corporations, and indigenous tribes to green-light their $100 billion railway project, which would provide ground-based infrastructure across the continents, relieve overcrowded Pacific ports, improve global supply chains, and ease tensions between the superpowers. The US and Russia have been successfully collaborating in space for decades. Now the Strait Guys are out to prove it is also possible down here on earth.