‘Arctic Drift’ Wins British Documentary Award
“Arctic Drift,” the international edition of the high-end documentary “Expedition Arctic” produced by UFA Show & Factual, has won the British Documentary Award for Best Science Documentary. “Arctic Drift: A Year Into The Ice” is a co-production of the Fremantle subsidiaries companies UFA Show & Factual and Wild Blue Media.
“Arctic Drift: A Year Into The Ice,” the international edition of the high-end documentary “Expedition Arctic” produced by UFA Show & Factual, has won the prestigious Grierson 2022 British Documentary Award in London in the “Best Science Documentary” category. The Grierson Awards recognize documentaries from the U.K. and abroad that have made a significant contribution to the genre and that demonstrate quality, creativity, originality and excellence. “Arctic Drift: A Year Into The Ice” is a collaborative production between the Fremantle production companies UFA Show & Factual and Wild Blue Media.
“This is a fantastic accolade for the collaboration between UFA and Fremantle – together we have garnered worldwide success for our first-class documentary ‘Arctic Drift’,” says UFA CEO Nico Hofmann. “Our companies had begun focusing on the major issue of climate change years ago, which was the only way we were able to participate in the largest Arctic research trip of all time. Today we have been rewarded and are proud to see that ‘Arctic Drift’ effectively shows the changes in our environment; together with the German Helmholtz Association, we were able to deliver an impressive, early signal.”
The documentary “Arctic Drift: A Year Into The Ice” takes viewers on a spectacular expedition aboard the Alfred Wegener Institute’s German icebreaker “Polarstern.” It tells the story of a landmark scientific expedition to the heart of the Arctic – to the epicenter of climate change. The international version is based on the unique footage of the high-end documentary “Expedition Arktis” produced by UFA Show & Factual for German public-service broadcaster ARD. Fremantle has already sold “Arctic Drift” to 170 territories and numerous broadcasters worldwide, including Amazon Prime Video for Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, Channel 4 in the U.K., PBS in the U.S. for its renowned science series NOVA, and France Televisions in France.
Four awards in Germany
For the German version, “Expedition Arktis,” the UFA Show & Factual teams exclusively accompanied the largest Arctic expedition of all time, on the initiative of UFA CEO Nico Hofmann. The documentary was a huge success on ARD and has already won four awards in Germany: the International Competition Jury Prize at the Natur Vision Film Festival, the “Best Science Documentary Award” at the Silbersalz International Science and Media Festival, the German Nature Film Award from the Naturfilm Foundation, and Best Artistic Achievement Award at the Ökofilmtour 2022. The producers of “Expedition Arctic” are Nico Hofmann and Ute Biernat (UFA/UFA Show & Factual), with senior producer and director Philipp Grieß (UFA Show & Factual) responsible for the content of the project.Besides the documentary by UFA Show & Factual, the "MOSAiC" expedition was accompanied by other Bertelsmann Content Alliance companies as well: BMG provided the soundtrack, and Gruner + Jahr, now RTL Deutschland, ran features about the expedition in its magazines "Stern," "Geo," “Geolino," and "P. M." Prestel Verlag published the illustrated book "Expedition Arktis," C. Bertelsmann published the expedition report "Eingefroren am Nordpol," and CBJ Verlag published the children's book "Expedition Polarstern." All three publishers are part of Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe. The Audio Alliance also published the companion audiobook "Arctic Drift - Das Audiologbuch."
