Director's Commentary
Stanislaw Mucha on his documentary "Weather Makers"
It was supposed to be a film about a man who has been researching the weather in the total solitude of the Arctic for years. About a weather man. But it turned out quite differently than we could ever have expected. And one hundred percent different!
When we left for the filming of probably the loneliest workplace in the world – a weather station on the Arctic Ocean – a total change was waiting for us, faster than climate change there. Our "cinematic" main character was in the throes of leaving the place. The man was a psycho-wreck, muttering over and over that he had lost his "struggle with isolation" and that isolation had made him sick.
The man was replaced by Vladimir and the meteorologist couple, Alexander and Sascha – the Romeo and Juliet of the Arctic. The three of them became our new protagonists. Only once a year in summer does a nuclear supply ship come and deliver the meteorologists with products that have to last for the whole year. And they wait for it, as if for a saviour, who sometimes arrives earlier, sometimes weeks late.
There is another resident, an old, charismatic man who has been away for a long time but was born and raised in the weather station. He is the son of a former meteorologist and a lighthouse keeper. When the "returnee" received his cancer diagnosis in faraway civilisation, he returned to the place of his childhood. His mission: to save the centuries-old lighthouse where his parents already lived and worked! What symbolism! While his inner lighthouse goes out, he wants to save the old, true lighthouse from collapsing.
With the camera we accompanied the four hermits and their extremely talented dog, whose life was unfortunately to come to a bad end before the end of the filming. We visited them in autumn, winter and summer and show their everyday struggle with the cold, the storm and the isolation. This is existential theatre – tragic and comic at the same time. The work of these meteorologists also influences the weather forecasts here, but what happens there surpasses any imagination of it.
Don't expect a film about climate change! Where we were, you forget how to spell the word climate. In this "somewhere in the middle of nowhere", the environment is so polluted by humans that you would think we had used an apocalyptic set design from "Star Wars".
You can look forward to a documentary report from the Arctic beyond, to a flick full of passion, tragedy, absurdity, love and even blood.