ATTENTION climate-change sceptics: Jeff Orlowski’s beautiful documentary presenting undeniable confirmation that climate change is happening on a planet near you, a real phenomenon which humankind needs to deal before with it turns our planet into a wasteland, has power to excite and perhaps depress us all.

The plot is direct and focused. James Balog and his Extreme Ice Survey team set up a network of time-lapse cameras to record changes to glaciers across the Arctic from Alaska to Greenland, plus two in Montana.

That region is a safer choice for this kind of project than its southern hemisphere counterpart simply because of better accessibility. But safer is relative. “Chasing Ice” offers dauntless courage confronting terrifying risks as Balog and companions venture into locations inaccessible without comprehensive safety rigs and fatalistic confidence in their efficacy.

People are important in the film. But its real stars are the glaciers’ wild beauty, gigantic scale and unchallengeable natural power delivering uncontrollable real phenomena, more terrifying than any artificial visions Hollywood might try to create.

Against backgrounds of those dominant elements, human figures and artefacts simply vanish. We know they are there, but their disappearance gives incredible scale.

Where would we be without adventurers, explorers and scientific enquiry like this film shows? Those attributes make “Chasing Ice” a film for us all to savour for its intrinsic values and acknowledge its truth.

At Dendy