From Japan’s Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route to France, Switzerland, Iceland, Canada, Austria, and Antarctica, vast white landscapes unfold. Snow walls are carved for tourists, artificial snow sustains ski resorts, and glaciers are cut to protect winter sports. Behind this perfect façade, snow and ice vanish fast. People who live and work in these regions speak of the daily realities of climate change, while quiet images preserve these frozen worlds for a future that may no longer know them.

Melt opens with the roar of a snowcat pushing through a dense blizzard, immediately establishing its precise and overwhelming visual power. Mapping the global climate crisis across distant regions, the film focuses on changing patterns of snow through nine stories shot between 2021 and 2025 in Japan, Switzerland, Canada, Austria, France, Iceland, Antarctica, and elsewhere. Trained as a photographer, Nikolaus Geyrhalter alternates majestic images of snow-covered landscapes with interviews in which local residents describe what shifting precipitation patterns mean for their lives.
The film’s concept is clear and austere. Its interviewees include ordinary residents, scientists, and people whose livelihoods depend directly on managing snow. Most scenes are composed as wide, static shots marked by striking symmetry, while black screens punctuate the interviews with a consistent rhythm. As the film patiently accumulates images of people carrying out their work in frozen environments, its subjects face the camera and describe, without political rhetoric or moral instruction, how snow conditions have changed from year to year. Precisely because these testimonies remain plain and unembellished, they convey the undeniable reality of the climate crisis more forcefully than any grand declaration could.

• ProducerNikolaus GEYRHALTER, Markus GLASER, Michael KITZBERGER, Katharina POSCH, Wolfgang WIDERHOFER
• Screenplay Nikolaus GEYRHALTER
• Cinematography Nikolaus GEYRHALTER
• Edit Gernot GRASSL
• Sound Sophia LAGGNER, Hjalti Bager-JONATHANSSON, Eva HAUSBERGER, Sergey MARTYNYUK, Ariane PELLINI

Austrian Films | Florian KECHT | florian.kecht@austrianfilms.com