Icebergs breaking into the ocean, lonely polar bears drifting on melting ice floes, disappearing glaciers – there are many ways by which a filmmaker could document climate change, the disappearance of ice and snow. Melt, as Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s latest documentary feature is called, would suggest just that. However, Geyrhalter has not maintained his audience’s attention over decades by consistently delivering exactly what one would expect. Melt is more of a love letter. An homage to snowy landscapes around the world, to the eternal ice of the poles and the mountains, and the daunting reality that “eternal” might be a term long gone.

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Premiering in the Features section at the 63rd Viennale, the first image that greets the viewer is meters and meters of snow covering a road and workers trying to dig a way through the masses. This is the region of Niigata in Japan, where the locals are snowed in every winter, and day-to-day tasks also mean freeing the entrance to one’s house. Similar scenes unfold at the Jungfraujoch in Switzerland, where the staff keep prepping the glacier and the viewing platform. In the Canadian North, in Aklavik, the Inuit population is subject to the ice road that allows extended travel to and from their isolated location. The locals are aware of the treacherous nature of ice. Density and maximum vehicle weights are calculated. Sunken machinery is recovered the next summer. Completely different scenes unfold, for example, in the French Val d’Isère. Snow cannons are shooting the artificial white on the slopes, ever trying to be invisible to the tourist eye.

Geyrhalter, who visited locations all over the world between 2021 and 2025, creates an almost fetishised glance at those ever white landscapes, capturing the peace and tranquillity of a winter scenery. This is where the world goes to sleep, one might think, when gazing over the Tyrolean mountains. This is where we uncover its secrets, while watching a busy German research station in the endless no-man's land of Antarctica. Of course, the debate around weather and seasonal changes is always lurking in the corner. “It is hotter now in summer, the snowfall is more intense over longer periods of time”, a couple in Niigata says. “200 metres”, says a tour guide in Iceland, “that is how much the glacier shrinks by each year”. What the tourists see today will be gone next year.

Geyrhalter shows these acknowledgements in a dry manner. Not seeking dramatic gestures or lecturing, he celebrates the cold and white. He lets his audience reconnect with what in many parts of the world one sees less and less of. Ultimately, it is almost in an upbeat tone; we humans do not have the final say in what will happen to our planet. “Nature decides what happens”, says the Swiss guard on Jungfernjoch. We are the ones who have to adapt.

Melt was produced by Nikolaus Geyrhalter Filmproduktion and is sold internationally by Autlook Filmsales.