White Wolves (feature documentary 2017, broadcast on CBC’s The Nature of Things). Film by Oliver Goetzl and Ivo Nörenberg, written by Barbara Doran, and narrated by David Suzuki. Executive Producers Barbara Doran, and Tom Synnatzschke. Producers Jill Knox Gosse and Lynne Wilson from Morag Loves Wolves & Doclights/NDR Naturfilm. Music by Duane Andrews.

SYNOPSIS

Fascinating, rare, and a dream for natural history filmmakers around the world.

Take a leap with the specialists of the impossible, Oliver Goetz and Ivo Nörenberg, in a layered discovery of WHITE WOLVES: GHOSTS OF THE ARCTIC, as they identify an intimate portrayal of this unique apex predator, and their survival on Ellesmere Island, as we have never seen it before.

At Canada’s northernmost edge, lies a place virtually untouched by humans: Ellesmere Island. Less than a thousand kilometres from the North Pole, it’s a remote and barren wilderness of snow-capped mountains, frozen tundra and ice-locked fjords. Few animals are tough enough to survive here. WHITE WOLVES: GHOSTS OF THE ARCTIC follows a family of arctic wolves that calls this Island their home.

Over a span of eight and a half months, the pack has been wandering the frozen landscape in search of food. Led by an alpha male and female, and joined by their grown offspring, the family had no choice but to stay on the move, as prey is scarce in the high arctic. Since last summer, they’ve wandered over 6000km, surviving 4 months in a continuous darkness during the harsh and unforgiving winter, where temperatures dipped down to -50°C. Now that the sun has returned, and the landscape is starting to thaw, the pack must work together in the brief arctic summer to help raise the new pups that have just come into the world. This new generation hastes to learn, under their families protection and care, to prepare for the fast-approaching, merciless winter ahead.

WHITE WOLVES: GHOSTS OF THE ARCTIC unearths the persuasion of survival instincts, convincing unimagined and rare behaviours in the white wolves as they face adversity. Their foundation in family, and the ecosystem that surrounds them, is a majestic manifestation that Canada’s discovered, next up USA.