20 Great Films Set on Ice

Cinema, when it confronts the extreme environment of snow and ice, performs a profound narrative stripping. There are the great survival epics that have made this landscape iconic—and you will find them here. But the true heart of this cinema, which explores the cold as a metaphor, flourishes in less-beaten paths. The cold is not just an obstacle; it becomes a primordial force that reduces humanity to its rawest essence.

This guide is a path that unites the most celebrated masterpieces with more radical auteur cinema. We will explore how Swedish, Inuit, Yakut, and Argentine directors have used the hostile landscape as a mirror for human fragility and a catalyst for psychological crises.

In these works, the frost serves a dual function: it is both a physical trap and an emotional barrier. The hostile environment is not the only enemy to fight, but a mirror for moral fragility and a catalyst for domestic crises, transforming survival in the ice into an existential question. This definitive review, designed for those seeking an austere and courageous cinema, is structured to show how the theme of ice evolves from pure survival to a profound investigation of failure and moral isolation.

Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (Atanarjuat) (2001)

The first feature film entirely shot in the Inuktitut language, the film reworks an ancient Inuit legend of jealousy, revenge, and violence set in a remote Arctic community. The hero, Atanarjuat, must flee naked across the ice to escape his persecutors, relying solely on his speed and the mercy of the icy nature.

The work by Zacharias Kunuk is fundamental, having won the Caméra d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. This film is not so much a tale of survival in the ice in the Western style, but a Shakespearean drama that uses the Arctic environment as a stage for moral laws and ancestral spirits. The frost and the infinite landscape symbolize the implacability of the traditional cultural code, contrasting human corruption. It is a powerful example of Inuit cinema, serving as a living archive and a tool for identity and cultural reaffirmation.

The Revenant (2015)

In 1823, fur trapper Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) is brutally attacked by a grizzly bear and left for dead by his companions, led by the pragmatic John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy). Miraculously surviving, Glass undertakes an impossible journey of survival through the frozen wilderness, driven solely by revenge. Directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu.

This is a visceral and brutal cinematic experience. It is an unmissable film for its technical mastery (shot using only natural light) and the Oscar-winning cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki, which transforms nature into a beautiful and terrifying entity. DiCaprio’s (also Oscar-winning) performance is a physical tour de force that makes the struggle for survival almost palpable.

On the Ice (2011)

Shot entirely in Barrow, Alaska, this independent Arctic drama follows two Inuit teenagers, lifelong companions, forced to cover up an accidental murder that occurred during a seal hunt on the ice. Bound by this dark secret, the boys must confront the claustrophobia of their small, isolated town while weaving a web of deceit.

Director Andrew Okpeaha MacLean, a FIPRESCI award winner, merges the independent glacial thriller with social realism. In this context, the frost and the frozen ocean are the unchanging environment that amplifies the sense of guilt and lies, which freeze in the protagonists’ consciousness. The geographical isolation makes it impossible to hide the truth for long, transforming the Arctic vastness into a psychological prison that severely tests the “limits of friendship and honor.”

Village at the End of the World (2013)

This documentary is set in Niaqornat, Northwest Greenland, a community of hunters with only 59 inhabitants. The film documents the community’s struggle to reopen the fish factory and survive depopulation, in a context where melting ice and the lack of government subsidies threaten the very existence of the village.

The film, while narratively engaging and witty, offers a universal reflection on the dilemmas of small communities in a globalized world. In Greenland, survival in the ice is questioned not only by the climate but by politics and economics. The melting ice is not just a climate threat, but a powerful commentary on change that forces young people, like the protagonist Lars, to dream of a virtual existence far from hunting traditions. The danger of relocating the entire village crystallizes the tension between tradition and modernity.

Sami Blood (Sameblod) (2016)

Set in northern Sweden in the 1930s, the film tells the story of Elle Marja, a fourteen-year-old Sami, part of the reindeer herding people, forced to study in an itinerant school reserved for her people. Faced with institutional racism and discrimination, the girl decides to repudiate her culture and seek integration into Swedish society.

Directed by Amanda Kernell, this drama is a raw and necessary analysis of identity conflict. Although the snowy and glacial landscapes of northern Sweden are breathtaking, the film uses the cold as a symbol of the emotional distance and segregation suffered by the Sami people. Elle Marja’s flight from the reindeer tents to the cold of modernity represents a painful choice between loyalty to her roots and the search for social redemption, amplifying the sense of alienation.

Force Majeure (Turist) (2014)

A wealthy Swedish family is on vacation on the stunning snowy slopes of the French Alps. During lunch, a controlled avalanche, but perceived as a deadly threat, strikes the restaurant. The father, Tomas, instinctively flees to save himself, leaving his wife and children. The unexpected event, although causing no physical damage, triggers an “emotional fracture, almost as cold as the fracture that caused the landslide.”

Ruben Östlund’s masterpiece is an almost entomological observation of the human psyche and modern masculinity, essential in Scandinavian auteur cinema. The avalanche acts as a catalyst that exposes the hypocrisy of bourgeois life. The frost of the alpine setting reflects the inner coldness and embarrassment that follows the non-physical trauma, focusing on the “observational comedy about the role of the male in modern family life.”

A White, White Day (Hvítur, Hvítur Dagur) (2019)

A retired police chief in a remote Icelandic town tries to overcome the loss of his wife. During a period of thick fog and incessant snow—the “white, white day”—the man begins to suspect his wife was having an affair, plunging into a spiral of obsession and latent violence.

Icelandic cinema excels at making the environment a central narrative force. In this independent glacial thriller, the cold and fog are not mere atmospheric elements; the “white day” is a state of mind, a visual and emotional limbo that reflects the protagonist’s confusion and destructive grief. The Nordic landscape transforms into an emotional desert where revenge slowly freezes, waiting to be unleashed.

Kitchen Stories (Salmer fra Kjøkkenet) (2003)

In the post-war era, a Swedish research institute undertakes a surreal study of Norwegian single men to optimize domestic kitchens. A group of Swedish “observers” travels to Norway and monitors the culinary habits of the subjects in a rigid experiment. The subject, Isak, and his observer, Folke, struggle to maintain scientific detachment in the icy isolation.

This film is deeply rooted in surreal and auteur Nordic cinema. The cold and rural setting of Norway serves to underline the absurdity of the excessive rationalization of human life. The external frost is in stark contrast to the warmth of the kitchens that the scientists attempt to quantify. The film is a meditation on isolation and the impossibility of objectifying life, made more poignant by the desolate landscape.

The Dark Valley (Das finstere Tal) (2014)

A mysterious lone rider arrives in a small, isolated Austrian alpine village in the 19th century, presenting himself as a photographer. The village, oppressed by snow and ice, is ruled by a violent and secretive patriarchal clan. The visitor’s true purpose soon emerges: to avenge past injustices suffered by his family.

A rare example of an Alpine Western, this film combines the iconography of the American genre with the claustrophobic atmosphere of European dramas set at high altitudes. The snowy mountains and the frost serve as a natural prison that traps the violence and secrets of the village. The cold is not just a backdrop, but the constant threat that keeps the inhabitants in a state of fear and moral isolation, amplifying the latent violence.

The Iceberg (L’iceberg) (2005)

Fiona, a woman working in the food industry, develops an obsession with extreme cold after being locked in a cold storage room. She abandons her husband and children and embarks on an absurd journey to the Great North in search of icebergs, eventually shipwrecking alone on a drifting block of ice, in a surreal quest for the extreme glacial condition.

This Belgian-French film is an eccentric example of dramatic comedy and experimental cinema, a true underground film. The obsession with the iceberg is a manifestation of an existential crisis and the desire for metaphorical reset. The frost, in this view, becomes the ultimate answer to the pressures of modern life. Drifting on the iceberg represents total emancipation from social conventions, celebrating isolation as a radical form of freedom.

Winter Sleep (Kış Uykusu) (2014)

The Palme d’Or winner at Cannes, this film follows Aydin, a former actor who manages a small hotel in Cappadocia, in the heart of Anatolia. His days are punctuated by bitter interactions and conflicts with his wife and sister. The arrival of snow and winter isolation drastically intensify the marital crises and philosophical reflections on bourgeois hypocrisy.

Although not Arctic, the winter setting in snowy Cappadocia is structurally fundamental to director Nuri Bilge Ceylan. The film is an epic, lengthy, introspective drama in which the snow acts as a veritable psychological “ice trap.” The stillness and asphyxia of the winter landscape reflect the emotional and intellectual stalemate of the characters, stuck between unfulfilled ambition and moral misery.

The Lord Eagle (Toion kyyl) (2018)

Produced by Sakhafilm, the film studio of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), the film is set in rural Yakutia at the beginning of the 20th century. An elderly hunter saves a wounded eaglet, which he cares for and raises as a member of his family. This mystical bond with the sacred bird serves as a bridge between traditional Yakut spirituality and the harsh reality of life in the Siberian taiga and extreme cold.

Yakut cinema is a forge of Siberia underground films of extraordinary authenticity. In this drama, the frost is not just a condition, but the very matrix of animistic mysticism. Survival is interdependent with respect for nature and its creatures. The vast snowy expanse reflects an ancient spiritual depth, offering a rare glimpse into a culture rooted in glacial geography, far from clichés.

Tundra (2013)

This independent Russian documentary offers an intimate portrait of the Nenets reindeer herders, a nomadic people living in the Yamal and Taymyr peninsulas, in northern Russia, between the taiga and the frozen tundra. The film documents their millennia-old traditions and how these are jeopardized by the pressure of modernization and the exploitation of natural resources.

Although a documentary, Tundra is a fundamental text on contemporary Arctic drama. The emphasis on the glacial environment and the precarious life of the Nenets makes it crucial. The expanse of the tundra reflects the vulnerability of a culture constantly threatened. It is a work of ethnographic realism, where the struggle to maintain nomadism in the Arctic frost symbolizes a resistance against economic and political forces larger and colder than the climate itself.

The Banishment (Izgnanie) (2007)

Directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev, the film follows a family who takes refuge in a remote country house immersed in a snowy and desolate alpine landscape, in an unspecified region. When the wife unexpectedly announces she is pregnant by another man, the family crisis explodes in a context of violence and isolation.

Zvyagintsev uses cold and austere landscapes to frame moral dramas of almost biblical scope. The frost in The Banishment serves as silent punishment for the characters’ sins. The isolated house, surrounded by snow, transforms from an apparent refuge into an emotional tomb. The film elevates the concept of moral isolation, where the snow is not a physical obstacle but the barrier that prevents the characters from escaping their guilt.

La Foresta di Ghiaccio (The Ice Forest) (2014)

This Italian independent glacial thriller, produced by Groenlandia, is set in an isolated alpine village on the Italian-Slovenian border, in an overwhelming landscape of fir trees and ice. A technician arrives to repair a fault at a hydroelectric power plant but finds himself involved in illicit dealings and secrets that the local inhabitants seek to keep buried under the snow.

Claudio Noce’s work exploits the mountain border and the frost as key elements of the mystery. The film highlights the dual meaning of the setting: a forest that is beautiful but still, dangerous, and frozen in time. The frost encapsulates the criminal past of the place, preventing any “thawing” of the truth, ensuring this production a prominent place in Italian independent genre cinema.

Below Zero (Cero) (2011)

An independent Canadian film set entirely in a remote, isolated research camp in the Arctic Circle. A group of scientists, working in extreme temperatures, discovers something inexplicable beneath the permafrost. Tension quickly mounts as the isolation forces them to confront an external threat and growing internal paranoia.

This film utilizes the classic Arctic isolation setup, developing it in a minimalist and psychological key, typical of independent Canadian cinema. The obsession with what is “below zero” (the permafrost) becomes a powerful metaphor for buried secrets. The tension is generated more by the hostile environment and the deteriorating psyche of the scientists than by special effects, resulting in a sharp independent glacial thriller.

Encounters at the End of the World (2007)

The iconoclastic documentarian Werner Herzog travels to Antarctica, to McMurdo Station, with the declared aim of meeting not so much nature as the eccentric people who choose to live and work in this hostile environment. Herzog defines these individuals as “professional dreamers,” capturing their singular humanity against the backdrop of a lunar and sublime landscape.

Herzog transforms the scientific documentary into a deep existential meditation. Antarctica is not just a continent covered in ice, but “perhaps the last frontier on earth.” The ice and the Antarctic underwater world are viewed through the auteur’s gaze, focused on the search for frightening beauty and the heroic humanity that voluntarily accepts the alien territory. It is an essay on chosen isolation as a form of philosophy.

Terra Nova – Il paese delle ombre lunghe (2023)

Italian documentary that retraces two Antarctic missions, culminating in the historic feat of the Italian icebreaker Laura Bassi reaching the southernmost point ever touched by a ship. The director, Lorenzo Pallotta, describes the experience as a “Dantesque, hallucinatory, lunar world,” where human technology confronts the immense power of the Antarctic frost.

Pallotta, part of the nouvelle vague of Italian cinema, deliberately chooses a “subtraction from the gaze,” blurring the image and inverting the colors. The ice, in this context, is what must be protected from the omnivorous eye of man. The film reflects on human fragility in the face of a nature that transcends its power and on the humility of observing the inviolate, fundamental for the understanding of extreme landscapes cinema.

Jauja (2014)

Set in Austral Patagonia (the extreme frozen south of Argentina) at the end of the 19th century. A Danish engineer (played by Viggo Mortensen) travels with his daughter to a military colony in a desolate territory. When the daughter runs away with a soldier, the man embarks on an obsessive and philosophical search in the inhospitable landscape.

Director Lisandro Alonso creates an almost hallucinatory and anti-narrative experience. Although Patagonia is not entirely ice, the Austral landscapes and their desolation are central. The film, shot in a 4:3 format with rounded corners, accentuates the feeling of dreamlike isolation. The father’s search through the wild and cold expanses of the Pampa becomes a metaphysical journey about the meaning of the frontier and loss.

Ravenous (1999)

A cult horror-western film set in an isolated, snowy military outpost in the Sierra Nevada during the Mexican-American War. The soldiers fall victim to a mysterious man who narrates the legend of the Wendigo, a creature that gains superhuman strength by eating human flesh in the cold, leading to cannibalism and paranoia.

Despite the recognizable cast, Ravenous is a cult film for its grotesque and independent tone. The cold and isolation are essential: the snowy, hostile environment pushes the soldiers beyond the moral and physical limit, making cannibalism not only a horror but an almost logical consequence of the extreme cold. It is the peak of the independent glacial thriller that explores the dark side of the frontier.

The Road (2009)

Adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel. Father and son cross the United States in an indefinite future, where a cataclysm has transformed the world into a cold, gray desert. The two struggle to survive starvation and bands of cannibals, desperately searching for a milder climate to the south.

Although not strictly “glacial,” the film is defined by a dystopian cold, a constant absence of life and warmth. It is a powerful survival in the ice drama where perpetual snow and frost symbolize the death of civilization. The cold setting amplifies the central theme: the maintenance of humanity and morality in a world where hope is frozen.

Cranes Over Ilmen (Zhuravli nad Ilmenem) (2005)

Another Sakhafilm production, this drama is set during World War II. A group of young people from Yakutia leaves for the front, forced to leave the familiar cold of Siberia for the chill of battle in Europe. The film focuses on the deep connection with the homeland and the sacrifice imposed by the global conflict, viewed from the periphery.

It is a touching Siberia underground film that testifies to remote participation in a world conflict, rooting the story in cultural and spiritual geography. The use of the Siberian landscape (frozen lakes, taiga) establishes an emotional contrast between natural frost and the coldness of war, underscoring the gravity and solitude of the sacrifice.