How ‘Arctic Link’ Brings the Internet, and Digital Change, to Life on an Epic Scale

Imagine a remote corner of Alaska finally getting connected to the internet, and you can witness it! Interested? If so, are you wondering what this change will mean for the islanders? Filmmaker Ian Purnell has you covered on both fronts with his debut feature Arctic Link, a documentary of epic proportions in more ways than one.

The film world premieres on Monday, March 16 in the main competition program of CPH:DOX, the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, whose 23rd edition runs through March 22. 

Remember how we mentioned that the doc was epic? “In the Arctic Ocean, a colossal ship drifts along, while thousands of kilometers of fiber optic cable slide from the deck into the dark depths of the sea,” reads a synopsis.

If you need more evidence of the project’s scale, let’s just mention that the filmmaker worked on it for about 10 years. The CPH:DOX website even highlights this about Arctic Link: “Everything is enormous – from the massive cables to the images and phenomenal sound design – but the human scale never disappears from view.”

The looming digital change is juxtaposed by the ship’s Filipino crew members drifting in isolation, with their cell phones the only connection to home, if they work.

“When I first discovered a map of the world’s submarine cables, the internet suddenly took on a physical shape,” Purnell shares in a director’s statement. “I felt a strong urge to trace these hidden routes – to see how the network disappears beneath the sea and to meet the people who build these connections. I wanted to understand this infrastructure that usually remains unseen, and I knew I could only approach it emotionally rather than purely technologically.”

Produced by Franziska Sonder, Arctic Link features cinematography by Marie Zahir. The editor is Chris Wright, while sound and music come courtesy of Tobias Koch. Ensemble Film is handling sales.

Check out a trailer for Arctic Link here, which touches on the question of whether the internet will turn out to be a savior or a beast. It actually kicks off with a stat that may surprise you: 99 percent of internet traffic is going through submarine cables.

In a conversation about Arctic Link, Purnell shared with THR how he approached bringing the internet to life in visual and audio ways, the challenge and joy of the doc’s scale, and what he wants to do next.

Was Arctic Link really a decade in the making? “I had the original idea more than 10 years ago, and quite early on, I researched where I could get on one of these ships,” Purnell recalls. “It turned out to be a very difficult exercise to build relationships with these companies and for them to have a reason to take me on.” Several slots for him to board ships were under discussion, but things kept coming up, such as a storm, a canceled cable project, and COVID. “So, gaining access required a huge amount of patience,” the director concludes, requiring him and cinematographer Zahir to stay “extremely flexible.”

Shooting in a remote area without internet also presented the challenge of building a rapport with locals. “It was very important just to be present there and make connections in the village,” Purnell tells THR. “It went quite quickly once we were there, but the preparation beforehand was very difficult.”

Purnell was impressed by the awareness of the Alaskan people he met about what changes the internet may bring. “It was a very wise perspective,” he says. “They weren’t innocent. They knew what it was and would bring [with it], but they also could see it from an outside perspective a bit, which is hard when you are ridiculously immersed in it, like us.”

Purnell didn’t even need to force the subject. “Once we got off the ship and came to the island, all these conversations just started to flow,” the director recalls. “Everyone had this awareness that this ship was bringing the internet. It is a different kind of awareness that a lot of us don’t have, because you don’t see this ship that brings you the internet in front of you. So, these conversations just happened organically. I didn’t want to force my concept on them: ‘Now, talk about the internet!’ So, I was glad that this was just a natural topic of discussion, because they saw it right in front of them, coming towards them.”

How did the creative team approach portraying the internet from an aesthetic point of view? “For me, it was really important to find a new visual connection to the internet,” Purnell shares. That means he wasn’t happy to simply use images of servers and keyboards over and over. “I was really interested in creating this new imagery that even for me was surprising. In contrast, the ship was built in the ’80s, before the World Wide Web existed, so we got this smell of oil and this steampunk aesthetic instead of high-tech imagery.”

His conversations with cinematographer Zahir took on elements of zoological discussions. “We really tried to make inanimate infrastructure feel alive by portraying the cable like a snake, for example,” Purnell explains. “We were often talking about what kind of animal something could be, such as a whale. How can we make this physical stuff feel more alive? These discussions helped us make technical things become or function as protagonists, creating a more emotional connection, or sensual connection, rather than just a rational, technical connection.”

All this was a key focus of the filmmaking process that appealed to him and fascinated him. “The challenge was to make a film about something that is invisible and create an imagery for it,” Purnell tells THR. “And the fact that it is invisible also creates different stories around it. Different people who have a connection to it have to use their own imagination, so that creates a multitude of stories.”

Given the epic scale of Arctic Link, you would think Purnell may want to go small next. Wrong! “I have already done some research around topics of astronomy, especially around black holes,” he shares. “What fascinates me is the image of a black hole, because it’s something that is not possible to capture in an image. It’s all at a very early stage. But whether it is the internet or astronomy, I’m really interested in all these signals and waves. So, with a film about outer space, I would be following a similar approach.”