In the “War against Global Warming” (as inferred by the cover of this week’s Time magazine) there is no “battleground” affected more than the Antarctic. In a quest to chronicle how damning the effect of Climate Change is on the southern most point of the Earth, director Jean Lemire (The White Planet) spent 430 harrowing days there, which were all chronicled in his new documentary The Last Continent. It played to a packed house last Saturday afternoon at the Isabel Bader theatre as part of Hot Docs.

Much like White Planet, Lemire, a marine biologist, packs up his crew and equipment and boards the sea ship Sedna IV which leaves Quebec and sets a course for the Antarctic. Getting there is the easy part though; once they arrive the crew gets the opportunity to take one final chance to stick with the mission or opt to head back to Canada on the last boat out before winter sets in. Anyone that makes the commitment to stay it’s with the understanding that there is no way back for them until the end of winter. Conditions are just too perilous to travel in.

The intent of the mission is for the scientists on board Sedna to monitor how global climate change is affecting the Antarctic winter. The crew sail around Cape Horn and berth at Melchoir Bay near an old research post where they re-supply and exchange crew members. But it isn’t long before Lemire and his crew realize that despite their planning and technology, the effects of global warming in the area have already thrown a monkey wrench into their mission.

What I though was going to be a documentary covering the science of the mission, a kind of specific case study of the impact of climate change, turned out to be more of a human adventure. The mooring of the Sedna through lines to the rocky shore was supposed to be a temporary measure until the ice formed around the boat, locking it in the bay for winter. But the ice doesn’t start to from and instead the Sedna is pelted by harsh winds and rain, the exact opposite conditions expected.

In what is a nail-biting scene, the Sedna crew have to steer their way out of the bay and find a new place to weigh anchor. It’s a dangerous manoeuvre because the captain and first mate were amongst those that departed earlier. Adding to the excitement, almost like foreshadowing the inevitable, Lemire recounts the tale of Ernest Shackleton, one of the first explorers to try and conquer the South Pole. His mission ended because of the ice, and in a twist of fate, Lemire’s was endangered because of the lack of it.

The underline fright of Last Continent is the rapidly changing environment in Antarctica. In places where species once had to migrate to avoid the cooling temperatures, they stick around longer because there’s no longer that crunch to get out. The warming conditions threaten the population of krill, a plankton like organism that’s the nucleus of the food chain. The ice doesn’t form until weeks after it was supposed to, this fact and the beautifully horrid shots of collapsing glaciers and gushing rivers of melting ice illustrate the frightening statistic that Antarctic is warming five-times faster than the rest of the world.

Beautifully shot, Last Continent brings Antarctica to life in all its fragile beauty, while broiling down the complexities of the climate change impact in a poignant, though unexpected way. As if the continent itself were demonstrating for the filmmakers what global warming as wrought upon it, the age old struggle between man and nature makes graphically clear that we are both losing. If the eternal winter of the South Pole is rapidly disappearing, carried away in torrents of melted ice, what are we to expect in the not-to-distant future?

The Last Continent graphically shows the real danger before us terms of damage to the environment. But failing that, it’s also a compelling adventure story about human endurance in the most humanless piece of real estate on the planet.

The Lost Continent will be released across Canada later this year. Jean Lamire and his team are also putting together three hours of footage about the scientific mission which will air this summer on CBC’s The Nature of Things.

Finally, stay tuned to Lucid Forge in the next couple of days for an interview with Jean Lamire.