Boulder Environmental Nature Outdoors Film Festival 2026: Melt
July 19 @ 1:00 pm
$17.25
In his inimitable way, Geyrhalter (OUR DAILY BREAD, HOMO SAPIENS) travels the world of snow and ice. From Japan to the Alps, Northern Canada to Iceland, and Antarctica; MELT is the story of people living amid the gradual disappearance of the ice that was once presumed infinite.
Along the Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route in Japan, bulldozers carve out spectacular, 50-feet-high walls of snow to build corridors specifically to attract tourists, while the celebrated ski region Val-d’Isère in southern France uses artificial snow to create a winter wonderland. In Switzerland, snowplows carve furrows into the glaciers to preserve the snow for the coming winter sports season. And in Iceland, visitors pose in front of gigantic blocks of ice that are gradually being swallowed by the sea. Everything seems normal – but behind the apparently perfect white facade, the world’s ice and snow are melting at an alarming rate.
Everywhere Geyrhalter goes, his subjects talk of melting glaciers and increasingly extreme weather conditions, revealing how they experience climate change in their everyday lives and work. Filmed between 2021 and 2025, MELT preserves some of the world’s most compelling frozen landscapes, addressing some of the greatest environmental and political questions of our age.
“A meticulous, contemplative sweep of the globe, Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s impressive doc takes stock of humanity’s toil to control ice and snow as the climate crisis advances.”
—Carmen Gray, The Film Verdict
“Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s latest documentary is a fascinating, unsentimental love letter to snow and icy landscapes.”
—Susanne Gottlieb, Cineuropa
Directed by Nikolaus Geyrhalter | Runtime: 127 mins