At the edge of the Antarctic, bathed by the most violent waters in the world, there lies a lost island where austral wildlife remains intact, far from man and his destructive impact. South Georgia is a world apart, a land blasted by the Antarctic winds known as the Furious Fifties, which make life a permanent struggle for survival.
This isolated, savage land, conserved intact thanks to its climatological and geographic rigours, is nonetheless a paradise for Antarctic fauna in the months of the southern summer. Thousands of animals gather here to breed in the short period in which the climate declares a truce. And South Georgia then teems with life.
The history of man and this island has been as turbulent as its climate. On the northern coasts, wracked by years of storms and solitude, abandoned whaling settlements are a reminder of a distant past, when only the most seasoned mariners and heroes came to these shores to process the captured whales or take on provisions before setting out to explore the frozen wastes of the Antarctic. On solitary, silent strands, beached ships still raise their masts, broken now by centuries of inactivity. Lonely tombs mark the final resting places of heroes. History intermingles with the violent, breathtaking landscape: Cook, Larsen, Shackleton. Everything seems to be bathed in the ancestral stillness of this virgin land, its completely wild animal populations, the harshness of its climate and, in short, its fascinating nature.
South Georgia: Life Beneath the Roaring Fifties is a journey around this forgotten, unknown land, a hymn to its fascinating wildlife and an exploration of its implacable ferocity. It is a documentary about survival and adaptation at the edge of the impossible, about the astonishing power of nature to overcome the rigours of the climate.
It is also a homage to one of the last corners of the world where life remains in its original state: pure, tenacious, violent and savage, but above all, profoundly beautiful.
