Russian Arctic National Park has released the trailer of a documentary filmed as part of the I Am a Polar Bear project with the support of the Russian Geographical Society.

The film shows the work of Russian scientists in the Arctic. It highlights the long-term observations of the largest Arctic predator on the Novaya Zemlya and Franz Josef Land archipelagos: efforts to study the current habitat of polar bears, collect data on their migrations, and analyse habitat changes amid global climate change.

The first stage of filming took place in 2020 at Cape Zhelaniya on Novaya Zemlya. Cameraman and editor Maxim Pervakov filmed the painstaking work of zoologists from the Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution at the Russian Academy of Sciences for two months. During the second stage, the film crew spent two weeks on Alexandra Land of the Franz Josef Land archipelago.

According to Alexander Kirilov, director of Russian Arctic National Park, polar bear research in the park takes place in both clusters: the southern one (the northern tip of Novaya Zemlya) and the northern one (the Franz Josef Land archipelago).

“The work began in 2009 and has been carried out on a permanent basis since 2017 by a group of biologists led by Ilya Mordvintsev, a senior researcher at the Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution at the Russian Academy of Sciences. The programme is designed to study, preserve and restore the polar bear population, which has been listed in the Red Data Book of our country since 1956,” he said.

The project received praise from the Russian Geographical Society. Russian Arctic National Park, as the creator of the I Am a Polar Bear project, was invited to contend for the Crystal Compass national award.