Die Saat – Tödliche Macht is the next event series from the ARD stable. In the thriller, Heino Ferch, among others, is confronted with an agricultural conspiracy that affects all of Europe from Spitsbergen.
The filming some of them took place directly on site in the (very) far north. The Norwegian archipelago Spitsbergen is near the Arctic Circle. Ferch and his Norwegian co-actress Ingrid Bolsø Berdal stayed in the region for three and a half weeks.
Ferch spoke about the filming conditions in the ARD morning magazine. This was the case due to the northern location and summer time “brightly bright all day long” and the crew had to force themselves to sleep. But the constant brightness wasn’t the only problem…
Polar bear warning: The dangerous filming of Die Saat in Spitsbergen, Norway
The location of Svalbard
As you can see on the Google Maps screenshot, the Spitsbergen archipelago is located at the height of Greenland. The natural and animal world looks the same. Yes, there are polar bears in Svalbard. And Heino Ferch and Ingrid Bolsø Berdal also had to expect a furry surprise:
It’s very lonely up there. There are animal encounters in the water and on land. There are more polar bears than residents, says the tourist office. The Filming is with an armed guideif you are outside the towns, because there is always contact with the polar bears.
There are around 2,400 inhabitants in the region, spread over around 60,000 square kilometers of land. With an estimated 3,000 polar bears, the animals are actually in the majority. But did Heino Ferch and Co. meet polar bears or not?
We once had a situation where we had to get into the cars and 20 minutes later we were gone again. There was one [ein Eisbär] a few hundred meters further.
This shows how sensitively the local population treats wild animals. But there was a controlled sighting, according to Heino Ferch:
On short excursions that we had on the very few days off, we went to the glacier and were able to see and observe the polar bears. That was very exciting. What is The Seed about?
The nephew of the police trainer Max Grosz (Heino Ferch) is doing research in the Norwegian archipelago of Spitsbergen. Victor (Jonathan Berlin) violates the limits of the law and has gotten himself into deadly trouble.
More on the subject:
The investigative journalist disappears without a trace and Max travels to the icy region of the Arctic Circle. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is located there Seed storage intended as a safety store for catastrophic times. Victor was apparently on the trail of a secret related to the memory. Max eventually teams up with his Svalbard colleague Thea Koren (Ingrid Bolsø Berdal). The duo gets entangled in the intrigues of the agricultural world and thus attracts attention themselves.