Chelyuskin. First (Season 1)

Chelyuskin. First (2025) is a Russian historical drama series you can watch online on iFILM. Director Stepan Korshunov reconstructs the summer of 1933: the steamship Chelyuskin leaves Murmansk bound for Vladivostok, aiming to navigate the entire Northern Sea Route in a single season. No ship had finished that route before.

The expedition is led by polar scientist Otto Schmidt. After months of pushing through pack ice, the hull gives way in February 1934. The ship goes under in two hours. Over a hundred people end up on an ice field in the middle of the Chukchi Sea, hundreds of kilometers from land. Starring Kirill Kyaro, Gleb Kalyuzhny, Stasya Miloslavskaya, Dmitry Kulichkov and Alexei Rozin.

Soviet propaganda turned the rescue into a national story of triumph. The series is more interested in what those people went through before the planes arrived. Stream Chelyuskin. First (2025) online on iFILM.