Last updated January 8, 2018 at 12:01 pm
What do you do when you love your hometown – but it could be killing you? That is the dilemma for the residents of the arctic mining city of Norilsk in Russia’s central north.
Norilsk is the world’s northernmost city with more than 100,000 inhabitants and second largest city after Mumansk inside the Arctic Circle. It is also one of the most polluted cities anywhere in the world.
Despite that many residents are still proud to call it home.
Much of the damage done to Norilsk’s environment came from Norilsk Nickel, for years the city’s main employer. In 2016, as part of plans to clean the city up the company shut its main nickel plant.
But other plants in Norilsk simply took over the factory’s operations.
This touching short film explores the dilemmas facing modern industrial area and the relationship of people to their environment.
Further reading
A Toxic, Closed-Off City on the Edge of the World
Over the holiday period, we are highlighting science films featured in last year’s SCINEMA film festival.
SCINEMA is the largest science film festival in the southern hemisphere showcasing the best in science cinema from around the world. SCINEMA is a celebration of the power of the moving image to inspire the young, satisfy the curious, explain the baffling and ask the impossible.
You can read more about it, or even enter your own film, here.
