The North Drift

Director: Steffen Krones
Germany, 2022, 94’
with Turkish and English subtitles 

A German beer bottle washed ashore on an island in the Lofoten Islands in the Arctic Ocean that is inaccessible on foot. Did it really come from Germany? Dresden-based filmmaker Steffen Krones begins building buoys to track the paths of plastic waste through German and international waters. Steffen travels north with the buoys – a road trip that opens his eyes to the state of our waters and the need for change.  Together with his friend and neighbor, aspiring industrial designer Paul Weiß, he begins building GPS buoys capable of traveling to the North Sea. With the support of renowned marine biologists and scientists such as Dr. Lars Gutow and Dr. Melanie Bergmann, he tries to document the course of plastic waste first in the Elbe and finally in the North Sea and examines the connections to pollution in the polar sea.  We also meet Steffen’s Inuit friend Kris,  who as a travel companion in the Arctic Ocean wants to bring tourists closer to the beauty of nature, and also to the influence of humans through plastic pollution. They both share the desire to put an end to the pollution of nature with plastic waste. Their stories, their ups and downs in the struggle to find a solution, interweave and show that we are all part of the cycle and each individual has the power to make a difference.