Remember the old Split Enz song Six Months in a Leaky Boat? Well, that is nothing! Try spending 430 days on a 50-metre schooner that’s been landlocked by pack ice in the middle of Antarctica.

In his new documentary, The Last Continent (opening next Friday), that’s precisely what biologist/filmmaker Jean Lemire does with his crew in order to explore climate change in the Great White South and to show that, in his words, “everything is linked on this planet.”

“You cannot look at climate (solely) by looking at Toronto or Canada or even North America. It’s all linked.” So Lemire set off, retracing the steps of great early explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, perhaps not realizing that spending more than a year on a boat during an Antarctica winter would include struggling with rotting food, no communication with loved ones and nasty storms. But, of all things, it wasn’t the icy cold that Lemire would find most challenging — the coldest it dipped was –14 C.

Lemire points out that in just 50 years the average temperature in Antarctica rose 6 C — an astonishingly quick increase. “The problem with climate change is the time frame. It’s happening way too fast so animals don’t have time to adapt,” he said.

Although a beautiful, harrowing drama of exploration, the film mainly exposes how climate change influences wildlife. In fact, other than in the bay where Lemire’s ship was iced in, mild weather prevented pack ice to develop drawing many birds, seals and whales to congregate nearby, giving Lemire an extraordinary close look at the animals’ struggles.