Russia From Above

Episode one shows the metropolises of Saint Petersburg and Moscow from the air for the first time and sweeps across the 200-kilometer-wide Volga Delta, where ten million birds hibernate every year. The camera team climbs the 5,000-meter summit of Elbrus in the Caucasus Mountains and watches the antelope herds in the Kalmyk steppe in search of water points.

Russia's south is the focus of the second episode. The film provides breathtaking insights into the very Dagestan and touches the city of Rostov at the mouth of the Don, which is also known as the “gateway to the Caucasus”. In the south lies the largest river delta in Europe - the Volga delta. The seemingly endless expanse is fed by the largest lake on earth - the Caspian Sea.

Episode three flies over Siberia with Lake Baikal, which despite its size is frozen for six months of the year, and follows the Trans-Siberian Railway on its way to the Far East. Accompany a group of nomads on their way to the spring camp through the unique Altay Mountains, make a stop in Novosibirsk and show the deserted taiga from a bird's eye view.

In episode four, it gets so cold that it takes the help of an atomic icebreaker to find a way through the ice in the Arctic Ocean. In the Lena Delta, the frozen ground draws unique patterns across the land, which are particularly easy to see from the air. The camera team flies over Cape Schmidt, where polar bear families and walruses live, and over the Yamal peninsula.

In the last episode, “Russia from Above” flies to the Kamchatka Peninsula with its 29 active volcanoes, observes intrepid surfers at the eastern end of Russia and watches brown bears catching salmon. The documentary accompanies fur seals and their offspring on Tyulenyi Island and flies to the easternmost city in the country, also known as "Russia's San Francisco", Vladivostok.