A Moon of Nickel and Ice

Synopsis

Planted in the permafrost of Russia's Great North, the city of Norilsk was built by political prisoners around a major nickel and palladium mine, exploited by the Stalinist regime as early as the 1930s. Today, with 175,000 inhabitants, it is the most populous urban agglomeration north of the Arctic Circle. And one of the most polluted in the world. This film portrays an impressionist portrait of the place, through the experiences and testimony of some of its residents, including an old man who was deported at the time of the gulags ; workers from the mine who came to try their luck in this place, inaccessible by land; cultural professionals — guardians of the painful history of the city and finally teenagers who, for the most part, dream of exile in Saint-Petersburg. All these voices form the chorus of an elusive city, a theater of great social solidarity.