The Visitors | Storyteller

[NOTE: The Visitors available until January 20, 2025.]

A young anthropologist, Zdenka, moves with her husband and three sons to Svalbard, Norway, to study how life is changing in polar regions. She has received a prestigious two-year grant to carry out extensive research on the impact of globalisation on the inhabitants of the world‘s northernmost town, Longyearbyen. After falling in love with her new home, Zdenka discovers that more than icebergs and permafrost are vanishing in the Arctic. Through conducting interviews with residents, she begins to perceive how heterogeneous the small local community actually is, while also revealing tensions that lie beneath the surface. Zdenka then has to work out the extent to which she can get involved in the local community that she originally only intended to observe.

Interview with Veronika Lišková, Director of “The Visitors”

How did you meet Zdenka Sokolíčková and what interested you in following her research in Svalbard?

Before attending film school in Prague, I was on a course in cultural studies at the Faculty of Arts at Charles University and Zdenka was a classmate. When I learnt about her plan to go to Svalbard with the whole family, I felt a mixture of admiration and fascination. I admired Zdenka for having the courage to move away and work so far within the Arctic Circle for two years with such young children. The youngest, Adam, was less than a year old at the time. My second son was also quite young then, and I couldn’t have imagined embarking on such an intense journey myself.

The town of Longyearbyen seemed like a kind of enchanting, almost space-like colony, hidden away in the Arctic wilderness, and I wanted to capture Zdenka’s personal and professional experience of this very particular place.

What was the biggest hurdle during filming?

The trickiest thing for me was probably the distance at which the shooting was planned. I was used to being in close contact with previous subjects, agreeing on things with them in person and gradually forging a relationship with them. Fortunately, Zdenka and her husband Jakub were extremely helpful with my research. Longyearbyen is a small, orderly town, and Zdenka soon met a lot of people during the course of her research, and everyone got to know her very quickly. She often acted as a guarantor for interviewees, meaning they could trust me and the crew and feel comfortable with the filming. During the COVID-19 epidemic, Zdenka sent recordings in the form of an audio diary and Jakub sent videos that he recorded himself. These allowed me to not lose track and stay in touch with the place.

It was also not easy to get over the fact that I was making a film in a place considered one of the most drastically affected by climate change in the world, yet the crew and I flew out there, as did thousands of tourists. But I told myself that I would at least partially resolve this dilemma by not travelling by plane anywhere else for the duration of the filming, attempting to offset the emissions from any necessary flights in a meaningful way. I also filmed with the smallest crew possible.

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