BREAKTHROUGH FILM AWARD - Jackson Wild Film Festival | BEST DIRECTING AWARD - Woodstock Film Festival
Women's Polar Expedition • Cross-Cultural Collaboration • Climate Storytelling • Women Empowerment • Arab StudiesDate of Completion: 2022 | Run Time: 88 minutes | Language: English | Captions: Yes | Includes: Transcript & Discussion Guides | Director, Writer & Producer: Holly Morris | Arctic Cinematographers: Ingeborg Jakobsen & Kathryn Barrows
Against all odds and polar advice, a Muslim chaplain, a French biologist, a Qatari princess and eight other women from the Arab World and the West attempt to ski across the melting Arctic sea ice to climate change ground zero - the North Pole. In EXPOSURE, director Holly Morris and her crew capture this story as the team navigates everything from frostbite and polar bear threat, to sexism and self-doubt in an intimate story of resilience, survival and global citizenry. The 2018 expedition featured in the film remains the last-ever to reach the North Pole.
Salve Regina University | Donna Harrington-Lueker, Ph.D., Professor/Department of English, Communications, and Media; Program Coordinator/Minor in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
"I am so glad we rented this to start the semester. What a fabulously inspiring documentary."
Gloria Steinem
“A great accomplishment…awakens us to the WILDNESS and ADVENTURE in ourselves.”
The Chicago Tribune
“A triumph.... a delight and joy for viewers, a chilling revelation... An essential cinematic document.”
Museum of Science, Boston | James Monroe, Sr. Producer
"Exposure’s epic, urgent, timely beautiful and immersive storytelling left our audiences inspired. Morris, in person, connected our audiences to the story even further. We loved this film, and it was a privilege to program it.”
CBS News
“An evocative portrait of human endurance, and how climate change is affecting one of the world’s most alluring, and deadly, places.”
Moveable Feast
“...Committing these women’s journey to film is likely to get others comfortable with entering places thought to be unwelcoming to them no matter where they are in the world.”
5280 Denver’s Mile High Magazine
“The film is a tale of resilience, adventure, and environmental enlightenment.”
Film Threat
“Morris masterfully cuts together a beautiful documentary extolling the human spirit to conquer the unconquerable. With Exposure, she captures the beauty of untouched nature and weaves together a story of suspense and thrills.”
AWARDS
Prix de l’Aventurière La Boulangère Bio | Festival International du Film et du Livre d'Aventure
Breakthrough Film Award | Jackson Wild
Best Directing Award | Woodstock
Audience Award | Doclands
Audience Award | DC Environmental Film Festival
Best Adventure Film | BreckFilm
Winner Jen Snyder Bryceland Award | Lighthouse International FF
Best Adventure Film | Boulder International Film Festival
Best Cinematography | Thin Line
Wild Spirit Award | New York Wild Film Festival
Award of Excellence: Documentary Feature | Impact Docs Awards
Award of Excellence: Documentary Feature | IndieFEST Film Awards
Finalist | Green Film Network Awards
Best Adventure and Exploration Film | Kendal Mountain Festival
Spotlight Gold Award | Spotlight Doc Awards
Special Jury Award 2023 | Hollywood Arab Film Festival
Director, Writer & Producer of EXPOSURE
Director, writer and producer Holly Morris’s most recent documentary, Exposure (2022), tells the story of “ordinary” women from the Arab World and the West who team up to attempt a harrowing over-ice expedition to the North Pole. Her feature documentary, The Babushkas of Chernobyl premiered at the LA Film Festival, and won the Jury Award for Directing - the first of 20 awards the film received. After its theatrical run, the film broadcast across the world. The story of the film is based on Morris' print journalism and popular TED Talk, and is currently being adapted into a musical.Morris’ other films include Behind Closed Chadors (Iran), Holy Cow (India), Mana Wahines (New Zealand) and Paradox Found (Cuba), part of the Adventure Divas series broadcast nationally on PBS and worldwide. The author of Adventure Divas: Searching the Globe for a New Kind of Heroine (Random House), and former editorial director of the book publishing company Seal Press, Morris’ print journalism has been featured in Outside, National Geographic Adventure, The Daily Telegraph, SLATE & the New York Times and her film work has received many notable grants, including from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Redford Center, Fork Films, Chicken & Egg Pictures and the San Francisco Film Society. She is also a longtime host of the PBS travel series’ Globe Trekker and Treks in a Wild World.