Antarctica (1983) on Netflix
At Showa Base in Antarctica, fifteen Sakhalin huskies wait chained for the Second Cross-Winter Expedition to arrive. Dog handlers Ushioda and Ochi have grown attached to the animals.
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- Netflix3.2/5
- IMDb7.6/101,956 votes
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Trailer
Plot summary
The Second Cross-Winter Expedition of the Japanese Antarctic Surveying Team sails to Antarctica in February 1958 to take over Showa Base from the eleven men of the First Cross-Winter Expedition, who leave by helicopter. Fifteen Sakhalin huskies stay chained at the base with a week's food. Extreme weather keeps the icebreaker Sōya from coming near, so the handover is called off and the station is left unmanned. The men are worried about the dogs and want to rescue them, but fuel and drinking water are too short. Ushioda and Ochi, dog handlers on the expedition, know the huskies well, among them the brothers Taro and Jiro.
Cast
- Shinji Kanaias Ozaki Taicho
Show all 15 cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Antarctica (1983)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Concerns were raised that the dogs in Antarctica endured extreme conditions for realism, and the breed became briefly popular. American Humane withheld its "No Animals Were Harmed" disclaimer and rated the film "Unacceptable" over what it called deliberate cruelty on the set.
- The director said the dogs' emotions were painstakingly captured and edited into the film; for the death scenes the dogs were carefully anesthetized, the drowning and falling shots were filmed in the studio and blue-screened with the real location, and the blood was fake.
- Antarctica was a big hit worldwide, especially in Japan, where it held the box office record for Japanese-produced films until Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke finally surpassed it in 1997.
- At the Japan Academy Awards the film won the Popularity Award for the two lead dogs, Taro and Jiro, as the year's most popular performers, and was nominated there for best film, cinematography, lighting and music score.
- The real Jiro died at four during the fifth expedition in July 1960, and his body was kept as a specimen at the National Museum of Nature and Science in Ueno, Tokyo; his brother Taro died at 15 in 1970 and is a specimen at Hokkaido University.
Stills
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