SPECIAL MENTION by the JURY, AFI Los Angeles Film Festival, 2008
OFFICIAL SELECTION, Anchorage Film Festival, 2009
OFFICIAL SELECTION, Rotterdam International Film Festival, 2009

An astounding documentary on the first victims global warming, "THE LAST DAY S OF SHISHMAREF" travels to a small village in northwest Alaska, home to an Inupiaq Eskimo community, where homes are literally falling into the sea. The entire village is expected to disappear within 10 years. Sishmaref is the sole settlement on Sarichef, an island on the Chukchi Sea, situated just south of the polar circle in Alaska. The nearest towns are over 150 kilometers away. The island is inhabited by a community of Inupiaq families, who, for centuries, have been eking out a self-supported existence with hunting as their main source of livelihood.

In the past few years, the village has been forced to confront two great forces. On the one hand, the increasing influence of modern Western culture, such as the arrival of satellite television, the Internet, western clothes, music and food, has caused a deep schism between the older and younger generations. At the same time, another threat is slowly mounting. Due to the Earth's increasing temperature, in Alaska the temperature has risen 4 degrees Celsius in the past 30 years, the polar ice caps have started to melt and the sea is now freezing much later in the year.

As a result, each year, winter storms terrorize the island for much longer periods, causing enormous damage to its coastline. Large areas of Shismaref have already crumbled into the ocean. In order to save them, 14 houses had to be moved further up the island on large skis. The entire Inupiaq community is how facing a very difficult decision; whether to move the entire village to the mainland, an act that will irreparably change their community, their livelihood, culture and traditions. (90 minutes, 2008)