Black Ice

Maarten van Rouveroy van Nieuwaal, Tom Lowe, Elaine Hill, Greenpeace International | 2014 | 53 min.

2015 Official Selection

Award Winner: 2015 Honorable Mention

When the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise set sail to protest the first ever oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean, no one on board could have known what was coming. Seized at gunpoint by Russian special forces, the ‘Arctic 30′ faced up to 15 years in prison and found themselves at the center of a bitter international dispute. Their imprisonment, which cast the Arctic 30 in the same mold as political prisoners like Pussy Riot and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, lasted months. However, their resolve to try and stop oil drilling in the Arctic was never broken.