We start using heavy metal, strange music, just to express more the strange emotions which you cannot believe are possible.” Like, ‘Did we make it ourselves? Did we experience this and we are still alive?’ Whoa. “We understood it when we saw it,” said Kossakovsky. Kossakovsky and his team did not fully realize the danger they faced until they saw the rough cut. No one believed it.” They’re been shooting together ever since.įor the hurricane footage, his second assistant cameraman Derek Howard got himself from New York to Miami - despite closed airports and massive winds and flooding - to grab dramatic shots inside Hurricane Irma. “He was 28, and then we came to film condors in Patagonia and he did an amazing shot. He found ace German cinematographer Ben Bernhard after holding a contest to find the best camera assistant focus puller for his 2011 documentary “¡Vivan las antípodas!” Who could follow a condor flying with a 600-meter lens? “I met 196 people and choose one young boy,” said Kossakovsky.

Part of his crazy genius is finding crew able to pull off his vision. “There is not a frame of CGI in this film,” she said. For Kossakovsky, the answer is something of a trade secret. “How did you get that shot?” asked Weyermann. Another magical moment from that shoot: The camera pulls back to reveal a perfect, densely saturated, arching rainbow over the falls. “We were trying to come behind the waterfall … and get no drop of water on the lens,” he said. Director Victor Kossakovsky at a screening of “Aquarela.” Evan Agostini/Invision/AP/ShutterstockĪnother scary proposition was shooting the world’s highest uninterrupted waterfall, Venezuela’s Angel Falls, with a 2,368-foot plunge. But the third week, you realize you will not die and you have to fight.'” Thanks to his experienced helmers, his crew survived, but the boat wound up off the coast of Newfoundland. There is a saying: ‘The first week of a storm, you think you are going to die. “We were not able to go out from the storm,” Kossakovsky said. At one point, Madej climbed a 98-foot mast to wipe water off the camera lens. The boat’s captains, Hayat Mokhenache (a diminutive woman with 11 ocean crossings) and Peter Madej (20 ocean crossings) navigated 30-foot waves and 40-knot winds in what Kossakovsky calls the worst storm in 100 years. Kossakovsky persuaded the Polski Hak crew to across the Atlantic in a three-week voyage from Portugal to Greenland his camera team adapted military equipment to stabilize the camera. He got the shot, anyway, capturing wonderful blue walls with bubbles that indicate melting. Similarly, Kossakovsky wanted to film a 400-meter ice floe in Greenland from underwater - but if a mammoth iceberg shifts direction, you are dead. He’s grateful to them, and the gods of luck and miracles - not to mention understanding financiers and producers - that he got the shots he did without killing anyone, including himself. Kossakovsky found two intrepid sailors willing to take chances with their two-masted 100-foot schooner, the Polski Hak. That included being able to get close to the calving glaciers the ice hitting the water can create a tsunami. As soon as they began to unpack their equipment, “it started that second,” said Kossakovsky. The filmmakers arrived in Greenland prepared to shoot giant glaciers ready to fall apart, but were warned they might have to wait two months for anything to happen. For us, it’s about climate change, but the film could potentially reach a very different audience who would be going to see a film about the power of nature, which comes across in a visceral, emotional way.

There’s virtually no people and 12 lines of dialogue in the entire film. I could see it would be an immersive approach to the subject. “Whoa, this is incredible!” said Participant documentary president Diane Weyermann. A 12-minute cut of that Siberian sequence was worth $1 million in financing from Participant Media, which backed 40 percent of the $2.6 million budget.

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