Sikoqqinngisaannassooq
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Sikoqqinngisaannassooq

a documentary film from arctic Greenland
featuring the youth of Uummannaq Children’s Home

A remote Inuit community in Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland) faces dramatic transformation of their sea ice by climate change.

Interviews with indigenous elders (projected onto icebergs and re-filmed) are punctuated with Kalaallisut words describing their disappearing winter environment. These are inscribed in the sea ice by the island's youth using hunters’ tools, to reflect the impacts of climate change that originates a world away.

The Arctic Ocean is predicted to begin experiencing ice-free summers around 2030-2050. But Inuit communities' winter traditions, language and culture are already changing dramatically.

Are we witnessing the beginning of sikoqqinngisaannassooq : a future without sea ice?

Above: Opening sequence (1'17")

SCREENINGS

Official Selection: Tromsø International Film Festival, January 2025.
Next screenings: Riddu Riđđu Festivála (Sápmi/Norway); Nordisk Panorama, Odense, Nuuk and Reykjavik International Film Festivals; and more to be made public soon! And a 5' "teaser" version titled Sikkorluppoq has won The New Scientist editors’ award for best film at EarthPhoto2025 at the Royal Geographical Society in London.

BACKGROUND
Sikoqqinngisaannassooq was produced in a 2024 “circumpolar" collaboration – between Uummannaq Children's Home in northwest Greenland and artist-filmmaker Adam Sébire from Arctic Norway. It focuses on climate change by delving into linguistic, cultural and environmental transformations as felt by an indigenous community in the rapidly warming Polar Circle. Adam proposed the project to Uummannaq Children’s Home’s cultural/scientific outreach program, the Uummannaq Polar Institute, convened by Ann Andreasen, head of Børnehjemmet Uummannaq.

With the help of the indigenous staff they collated a series of words in the local Kalaallisut dialect that described the difficulties posed by the changing sea ice conditions around Uummannaq. This was not straightforward, as being a polysynthetic language (and one that faced colonial marginalisation common to many indigenous tongues) there were few official sources or agreed spellings in the local dialect. The children chose a word each, discussed its meaning, and with Adam, decided how to film it. Also through this process a new word was generated: sikoqqinngisaannassooq, which expresses the very real possibility of a future without sea ice. It became the title of their 15 minute film.

The tool known as a tooq is used by Inuit hunters to test ice thickness and make holes in it for fishing. Armed with tooqs and dressed in traditional clothing, the youth headed onto the sea ice, escorted by two hunters for safety. Adam filmed each child explaining their word and writing it in the ice; then, as an ensemble, constructing the new word. Whilst there was not enough time to involve the children in the editing, several helped Adam with translations as well as interviewing current and former Inuit staff at the Home about their experiences on the sea ice. The children also are the performers of the film’s musical motif, Siipinnguaq.

Adam received travel funding from the Nordic-Baltic Mobility Programme for Culture to establish this project. It had its world première at Tromsø International Film Festival, 14 January 2025 and will show at various film festivals throughout 2025.Stills from the project are part of Earth Photo prize 2025 (Royal Geographic Society UK) and were Highly Commended at Photography4Humanity, presented by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, in New York City, USA and Oxford, UK.

POSTSCRIPT
In the season following, winter-spring 2025, Uummannaq experienced no stable sea ice:
”No seaice in Uummannaq. We havent been able to go out at all. … Many tons of fish was not caught, so many have struggled,” one resident wrote to the director in May 2025.
The community was unable to fish, hunt, gather or travel on the ice.

TECHNICAL DETAILS
Filmed in 4K25p HDR (HLG Rec.2020), stereo audio. DCP-P3 available.
Version 1 (Sikoqqinngisaannassooq) 15’12” (revised June ’25) Version 2 (Sikkorluppoq – an extended teaser) 5'00".

DIRECTOR / PRODUCER / EDITOR / CINEMATOGRAPHER
Adam Sébire studied documentary at the national film schools of Australia & Cuba; as an artist-filmmaker his works focus on climate change. After opening a solo exhibition for Galleri Svalbard in March 2020 he found himself marooned in Northern Norway by Australia’s Covid-19 border closures; he's now become one of the Arctic Circle's 4 million human inhabitants. His earlier filmography includes his AnthropoScenes series (2015-2025); Carried by the Wind 2009; Echoes Across the Divide 2008; and ¿Cuántos Colores? 2000.


CREDITS


STILLS GALLERY