feature Documentary, 90 min.
2025

Directed by Corina Gamma
Produced by Danielle Giuliani and Patrick Merkle
tellfilm Production

ICEMAN chronicles the life and legacy of climate researcher Konrad Steffen, whose work on climate change led to his tragic end — claimed by the very ice he devoted his life to studying.

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In August 2020, the world learned that Konrad Steffen, a respected and well known Swiss-American polar scientist, had vanished on Greenland Ice Cap. The news sent ripples through the scientific community and beyond. How could a man so attuned to the Arctic simply disappear into it? If anyone understood the dangers of the nature of the ice, it was Konrad Steffen. Tall, bearded, and magnetic in presence, “Koni,” as friends called him, embodied the essence of the polar explorer – driven by a limitless curiosity, pushing boundaries, forever reaching deeper into the ice. For three decades he studied Greenland’s ice cap, deciphering its slow surrender to climate change. Institutions, scientists and governments were drawn to his insights and sought his knowledge. What force had first pulled him to the polar regions? How had he risen to such prominence that those shaping the world’s future turned to him for guidance? Through the voices of those who knew him best – colleagues, friends, and family, all weaving together the portrait of a man and his obsession. They takes us back to Greenland, to the place that both fascinated and haunted him. And in a cruel twist of fate, tinged with poetry, the ice he spent his life studying became his final resting place, a stark testament to the very force he spent his life trying to understand.

Swiss Distributor: Frenetic Films

Funded by:

Zürcher Filmstiftung
SRF Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen / SRG SSR
Swiss Polar Institut
UBS Kulturstiftung
Dätwyler Stiftung
Else von Sick Stiftung
Volkart Stiftung
Crowdfunding