On the Banks of the River of Ice

Authors: Matti Bauer. Human interest - BR - 2009 - 45 min

In the High Alps there are only a few places where untouched nature and civilisation live as close together as on the Großglockner Mountain. Since the construction of the High Alps Route, thousands upon thousands of tourists drive to the mountain summit every year, high above the Pasterze, Austria's largest glacier, which is losing volume every year.

Matti Bauer sets off to visit people who live on the edge of the glacier: mountain guides, national park attendants, landlords and sheep farmers. They each have their own opinions of the Pasterze, which legend says used to be a green meadow. On the Banks of the River of Ice is a film about people who live on and from the Pasterze glacier and who are worried about its fate. But their worries differ from each other, sometime so fiercely that they oppose one another entirely.