NORWAY 2018, 70 min Director ASGEIR HELGESTAD
The majestic landscape of Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, is home to gentle Frost, a polar bear mother, and her romping, rambunctious cubs, captured in affectionate and intimate detail by wildlife photographer and filmmaker Asgeir Helgestad. Over the course of four years, Helgestad tracks and documents the lives of the bears, as well as native foxes, reindeer, seals, walrus, birds, and blue whales—a breathtaking and beautiful ecosystem imminently impacted by rising temperatures and glaciers melting at record speed. Queen Without Land dramatically showcases this epic territory of towering mountains, narrow fjords, and flowering meadows, the dynamic wildlife that populates the land, and the myriad modern threats to its future.