Finding warmth in the coldest places

The cool colors of the arctic washed over the audience at BOZAR on Wednesday night. As a woman hums, her dog gracefully prances over the snowy landscape, introducing the Brussels crowd to their home in the Lofoten Islands of Norway. However the impressively vast visuals of the mountains and snow are just the backdrop for the very human stories that take place in the coldest communities on Earth. 

That was the opening of the first film of the Arctic Shorts Film Evening, which took place at the BOZAR fine arts center in Brussels Wednesday night. The program featured eight short films from several different Arctic countries, from Canada to Greenland to Finland. It was organized by the Mission of Canada to the EU and the International Polar Foundation, in addition to several other organizations and countries who work with or in polar regions. 

“There is no such thing as ‘the Arctic,’” Michael Mann, the EU Special Envoy for Arctic Affairs, said. “It’s so diverse and it’s like saying ‘Europe is all the same.’ The Arctic is massive and there are so many different societies and traditions. And it’s just nice to bring it to life. … There are people who live there … And it’s not just about preserving the place, it’s about preserving ways of life and bringing people futures.”

The festival was organized as part of the Arctic Futures Symposium last year. The event was supposed to have happened during the symposium, however due to Covid-19 restrictions they were unable to hold the event. The film festival was first introduced to the symposium in 2018 when organizers were looking to add a more cultural element to the program, Joseph Cheek, Communications Officer for the International Polar Foundation, said. 

“It is the region of the planet that is changing the quickest due to climate change,” Cheek said. “What happens in the Arctic will affect everywhere else on the planet.”

Even during a time when coronavirus cases were rising in Belgium, the event filled the theatre’s reduced capacity of 180 people.  

The films covered a range of genres from dark comedies to documentaries. They also covered an array of topics, from family history to the future of the region. Several films drew attention to the increasing impact that climate change has had on those societies. One film punctuated the personal drama of a disappearing relationship with thundering waves, which are created by the disappearing glaciers. 

“Some regions of the Arctic are quite advanced in terms of investigating green solutions,” Cheek said. “A lot of the indigenous people up there already live very sustainably. They have for several thousands of years. So it’s a region that the rest of the world should pay attention to as an example of how to live more sustainably.”

That isn’t to say that every film focused on the impact of climate change. In fact, the films focused far more on the human stories that take place in the Arctic every day. They included everything from a teacher struggling to get a young boy to open up to two men saying goodbye to their grandmother. The four million people that live across the many Arctic regions have many of the same problems as people who live in mainland Europe or southern Canada. Their families experience death, they have to move around where jobs go and they fall in and out of love. 

“A lot of people think the Arctic is this vast wasteland and only polar bears live there and it’s full of ice,” Cheek said. “But four million people live in the region. That’s not a small number. People live and work there, they try to make a good life for themselves up there. They are interested in sustainable economic development.” 

The full-house audience included people from many of the partner organizations as well as people who just wanted to experience an educational evening about one of the planet’s least known regions. Anne Andersson from the Stockholm Region EU Office was invited to the event by friends from the North Sweden regional office. 

“I often think that local challenges can be similar, even if it’s not the same continent,” Andersson said. “I think it’s great that there are organizations trying to find the similarities, but also showcase what’s important for each local group or area. … I’m grateful I got the invitation and I hope it will broaden my perspective on some things.”

For EU Policymakers, events like this are important to help them understand regions that aren’t always at the forefront of their minds. Mann has been in his role of Special Envoy since April of 2020 and as such, hasn’t been able to travel there. Events like this allow policymakers to experience walks of life they wouldn’t necessarily have had the chance to otherwise.

“I hope that people can start thinking about it a bit more. Global warming is happening three times faster there than anywhere else and it has a knockdown effect everywhere. People need to start taking it seriously. The Arctic is not just for people who live in the Arctic. It’s for everyone. We have to protect it.”

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