The best Stephan Schad’s documentary movies

It's the largest Arctic expedition of all time. In September 2019 the German icebreaker "Polarstern" is on its way to the North Pole. The best scientists of their generation are on board. Their job are to collect data about the ocean, ice, atmosphere and life. The mission is to understand climate change, because the changes in the Arctic have an impact far beyond the region. The documentary provides spectacular close-ups of the MOSAiC expedition under the direction of the Alfred Wegener Institute together with the Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) and shows the world of the Arctic during the polar night, from which hardly any data and images existed until now. A scientific, logistical and also human adventure of a community of researchers and crew members who let themselves be frozen with the ship for a year in the ice desert near the North Pole in order to use the natural drift of the ice, captured for the audience in impressive images.

Ninety years ago, in the summer of 1928, Scottish doctor Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin by accident. It took another two decades and a world war for him and others to succeed in producing the antibiotic in such large quantities that the epidemics of that time – typhus, syphilis, gangrene and tuberculosis – could be eradicated. But Fleming already suspected that one day a downside to his medical triumph would emerge. It is estimated that over 70 percent of aggressive germs are already resistant to the alleged wonder drug penicillin. Penicillin was used on a large scale for the first time during the Allied offensive against Nazi Germany in 1944. After the war, the drug was then offered over pharmacy counters in the US in the form of chewing gum to treat sore throats. Can we stop the trend today? A fascinating film about the history and current state of antibiotics.