Antarctica miracle: How India established its first scientific base in the frozen continent

Sourabha Rao, the producer of Miracle in Antarctica, which tells the story of Dakshin Gangotri, talks about how the movie was built, the challenges encountered, and why this expedition remains relevant more than four decades later

Updated - October 25, 2026 10:04 am IST

A scene from the film | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Sourabha Rao, the producer of Miracle in Antarctica, a new film chronicling the story of the building of Dakshin Gangotri, India’s first scientific base station in the frozen continent, says she is constantly surprised by the fact that the story has not been told in as many ways as possible. “It is a privilege for us to tell a story like that,” says the Bengaluru-based writer, poet and filmmaker who thinks of this initiative as groundbreaking. “A project of that scale was not accomplished before 1983-84 and hasn’t happened since, at least not at that pace; over one Antarctic summer.”

The idea for the film, which her husband Santosh Saligram has directed, emerged from a serendipitous meeting with Harsh Kumar Gupta, the geophysicist and seismologist who was sent to Antarctica to lead this impossible mission.

“One of our friends, also a filmmaker, Prakash Matada, bumped into Dr Gupta at a party in early 2025,” recalls Sourabha. Dr Gupta, who had already written a book, Building Dakshin Gangotri at Antarctica: A Miracle, published in 2021 by the Geological Society of India, and was actively looking for someone to make a film about this mission.

Since Prakash was tied up with other projects at the time, he immediately reached out to Sourabha and Santosh, the co-founders of the Hamsagatha Foundation, a Bengaluru-based not-for-profit focused on impactful storytelling. “We just had a very elaborate call, and by the end of that, we decided to take it up.”

The biggest challenge at the beginning of the project, as it often is, was funding. “No matter how passionate and hardworking we are to tell or retell a story, and no matter how good a project is, it needs monetary support at the end of the day.”

Though Prakash had made it very clear that there was no money for the project, it did not stop them from trying to meet Gupta on his next visit to Bengaluru. “He was so humble and approachable when we met him, asking about what we did as professionals instead of jumping straight into talking about his story. That was really nice.”

One thing that really stayed with Sourabha was what the then 83-year-old scientist told her after he had given her the gist of the project. “He told us that he wanted to do it as quickly as possible, because time was not on his side. That hit us really hard,” she says, adding that this statement cemented their decision. “We didn’t know how yet, but we knew we had to make this happen.”

They began by first reaching out to some of the people who had been part of the expedition: Gupta, who lives in Hyderabad, of course, but also Ashok Hanjura in Delhi and KJ Mathew in Kochi. “Dr Gupta offered some seed funding to start the project,” explains Sourabha, who, with Santosh, began shooting interviews for the film in May last year. Around the same time, they also began looking for funds, which, after plenty of paperwork, their foundation finally received from the Ashraya Hastha Trust, Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies and Samagata Foundation. “Once we knew we were going to get this support, we went all out.”

The film uses a mix of interviews, archival material, stock footage and animation to tell the story of not just Gupta’s life and memories of that fateful summer, but also the relevance of Antarctica today, especially in the age of global warming and extreme weather events.

“Standing up to the gravitas of the story or the scientists who made it happen was a monumental responsibility,” says Santosh, whose biggest practical challenge was finding enough archival material to support the storytelling. “For a contemporary audience or diverse, mixed demographic, there has to be a lot of visual support, and initially there was just not enough material,” he says.

Meticulous investigation, and yes, a little bit of luck, would soon change that. “We managed to find an old documentary that helped us immensely,” he says. Then came the task of putting it all together on the editing table, says Santosh, who also worked with the Indiranagar-based LastBench Studio to help recreate certain scenes and fill the gaps in the narrative.“Using actors wasn’t an option, for multiple reasons, so I am glad we found a team who understood what was required and brought in that aesthetic,” he says.