Against The Ice Release Date, Cast And Plot - What We Know So Far
The 2010s, as a decade in film, was marked by a lot of conspicuous trends that got extensively pored over, analyzed, and discussed. But one genre that really took off in the last few years, without quite eliciting that much fanfare, is the survival film.
From more traditional, tension-filled horror-thrillers like "Frozen," "The Shallows," and "Crawl," to slower, artier fare like "Meek's Cutoff," "The Revenant," and "All Is Lost," to heart-racing action-adventure offerings like "The Aeronauts," "Everest," and "The Grey," to big, effects-heavy existential reckonings like "Life of Pi" and "Gravity," the last few years in film have really epitomized a preoccupation as old and elemental as storytelling itself — the basic human drive to make it back, no matter the odds. Whether it's the desert, the jungle, the open sea, hostile wildlife, the Earth's stratosphere, outer space, or Mars, never before have we had such an ample and varied offering of movies about human beings fighting for life in environments that don't exactly favor it.
Now, another one of those movies is coming, and it looks like it will be a must-watch: Netflix has released the official trailer for "Against the Ice," an Arctic survival film with the very interesting distinction of being based on true, historically major events. Here's everything we know so far about this Peter Flinth-directed film.
When will Against the Ice be released?
"Against the Ice" was first announced in January 2021, with Deadline then describing it as an "under-the-radar project" that had "recently wrapped filming in Iceland and Greenland."
Perhaps because the film wrapped its production process so early in 2021, we are now, as we enter 2022, just on the cusp of getting to see it. As per the 72nd Berlin International Film Festival lineup divulged in December (via Deadline), "Against the Ice" will be premiering at the prestigious German fest as part of the "Berlinale Special Gala" section. This means we should be seeing the first reviews for "Against the Ice" roll around between February 10 and 20, which is when this year's Berlin Film Festival will be occurring.
As for when the general public will get to watch it, the brand-new trailer released by Netflix contains a release date. In fact, the film will hit the streaming service, which is acting as its official distributor, on March 2.
Who will be in the cast of Against the Ice?
The star of "Against the Ice" is Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. Although naturally better known by worldwide audiences for his memorable performance as the ever-controversial Jaime Lannister across "Game of Thrones'" eight seasons, Coster-Waldau has been a highly prolific actor and screenwriter in Scandinavian cinema since the nineties. According to Deadline, "Against the Ice" is a passion project for him, which makes sense, given he is also producing it and co-wrote the screenplay with Joe Derrick.
The film, which looks largely to be a minimalist two-hander, will co-star English actor Joe Cole, who has been rising steadily in British film and TV thanks to films like "A Prayer Before Dawn" and TV series like "Peaky Blinders" and "Black Mirror."
"Against the Ice" will also be a bit of a "Game of Thrones" reunion, with Charles Dance, who played Jaime's nefarious father Tywin Lannister, set to appear in a significant role which will likely see him sharing scenes with his former on-screen son.
What will Against the Ice be about?
"Against the Ice" is both a literary adaptation and a true-story adaptation. It is based on "Two Against the Ice," an autobiography by real-life Danish polar explorer Ejnar Mikkelsen, and will dramatize the events of his fateful expedition to Greenland in 1909.
On the occasion, Mikkelsen was leading Denmark's "Alabama Expedition," a foray into the northeast of Greenland to determine whether or not the polar island was broken into two pieces of land by the so-called "Peary Channel." The expedition was haunted by the specter of the previous, disastrous "Denmark expedition," which had attempted to investigate the same hypothesis, but had resulted in several dead crew members whose remains had never been found. Greenland proved just as dangerous and inhospitable for the "Alabama" party, as after they were trapped in ice at Shannon island, most of them saw fit to return home on their whaler, leaving only Mikkelsen and engineer Iver Iversen to complete the expedition.
"Against the Ice" chronicles what happened after that: The process by which Mikkelsen, played by Coster-Waldau, and Iversen, played by Cole, braved the endless ice and unbearable cold of the Arctic to retrieve the previous explorers' remains and prove once and for all that Greenland was a whole landmass — and then braved it again, in the opposite direction, in order to return home. This extraordinary story of human perseverance has the unique factor of being steeped in real historical account. With that said, for fans of the survival movie genre, this movie looks totally unmissable, and thankfully, the wait for its release won't be long.