Actor Jonathan Berlin experienced climate change very closely while filming the ARD series “Die Saat – Tödliche Macht”. The film was filmed, among other places, in Spitsbergen, Norway, where there is an international seed archive. “Svalbard is one of the places where the climate crisis is manifesting itself in a brutal way,” said the 29-year-old (“Kruso”) in an interview with the German Press Agency. “The average temperature there has risen by around 10 degrees over the last 30 years. When we filmed there – in the middle of the Arctic – in July 2022, it was 14 degrees in places and there was hardly any snow.”
Jonathan Berlin kayaked along glaciers during the weeks of filming to research a short documentary, as he reported. “You could constantly hear the ice breaking. When you see and hear it, it’s hard to understand how we could so negligently jeopardize everything that actually protects us.” The first shows “Die Saat” on Saturday (8:15 p.m., four episodes) and on Sunday (from 9:45 p.m., two episodes) as well as in the ARD media library.
The miniseries addresses the influence of international seed companies – Jonathan Berlin finds the topic very urgent. “I had researched it before filming began – I also travel a lot in climate activist circles, where the topic of nutrition and resources is of course omnipresent,” he said. “I think the dominance of the few corporations in the global grain trade is an extremely good example of how dangerous it is when economic interests dominate political events.”
Berlin emphasized: “While the climate crisis is progressing so rapidly and at the same time these companies are massively increasing their profits, the food supply in the global south is becoming more and more dramatic. The climate crisis and therefore also the food crisis is always a social question: the further we move from 1, “If we move away from the 5-degree target, the fight for food and seeds will intensify.”
