Ice Grave

Ice Grave — Plot

On July 11, 1897, three men - the Swedish engineer Salomon August Andrée and his companions Nils Strindberg and Knut Fraenkel - set off from Spitsbergen for the North Pole in a hydrogen balloon, a daring attempt to conquer the Arctic from the air. Contact is lost after a few days. They are never seen again. Thirty-three years later, on August 6, 1930, a sealing ship makes a chilling discovery on the remote Island of Kvitøya, the northernmost part of Svalbard. The expedition’s remains, bodies frozen in time beneath the snow, alongside journals and undeveloped film material. Ninety-three of the 240 recovered photographs are salvaged. The documentary reconstructs this expedition between delusion and vision, between scientific ambition and human vulnerability as a compelling mosaic of past and present – ​​an archaeological crime thriller about the price of discovery, the beauty of the unknown, and the melting of memory in the ice of time, with a touch of tragic, unrequited love.

• Release date
• May 10, 2025
• Runtime
• 78 min
• Genres
• Documentary
• Director
• Robin Hunzinger

Ice Grave — Cast

H

Hélène Gaudy Self - Interviewee

T

Tyrone Martinsson Self - Interviewee Bea Uusma Self - Interviewee

G

Gunnar Horn Self (archive footage)

F

François Gillerot Self - Narrator (voice) (French version)

U

Ulrike Johannson Self - Narrator (voice) (German version) Henrik Ekman Self - Narrator (voice) (Swedish version)

S

Sandrine Grange Self - Additional French Voice (voice)