It’s hard to turn up to Trade Secret in Adelaide without thinking of the green scum currently choking our coastline: that thick algal bloom that has become a daily, luminous reminder of the climate crisis. Director Abraham Joffe’s new documentary confronts a different emblem of collapse: the polar bear.
Since An Inconvenient Truth seared that image of the stranded bear into global consciousness, few symbols have carried such emotional charge. Joffe knows this, and he wields the image with precision rather than sentimentality.
Joffe knows how full our cup of sorrow is, as audiences, and doesn’t lean into the horror. A crack of gunfire. Then silence, and a black screen. The director cuts before impact: no shock tactics, no trauma porn. When the image returns, we see only a thin red line across a white horizon, stretching into forever. It’s an image of violence, but also restraint.
The grainy archival footage of past hunts sits alongside intimate present-day scenes: Indigenous hunters preparing rifles with steady hands, each hair on the bears’ frost-coated pelts catching the blue light. Every texture feels tangible. You can almost feel the ice granules clinging to moustaches, the breath freezing mid-air.
Joffe approaches hunting with unusual sensitivity. He honours Indigenous ethics of take only what you need, use all that you take and contrasts them with the Western obsession to take all that you can, profit while you can.
The juxtaposition isn’t didactic; it’s lived, shown through the quiet authority of those on screen. Their hunting is a necessity, a ceremony, survival. Ours has become an acquisition. The film invites a larger question: Have we lost the soul?
The politics behind the pelts prove more chilling than any blizzard. Trade Secret reveals a shadow economy of animal parts, clinically sanctioned by CITES, the international convention meant to protect endangered species.
The film traces the route from tundra to trophy room, uncovering wealthy lobbyists and a murky chain of middlemen. Allegations emerge against unexpected actors, and the revelations land like ice cracking underfoot.
Despite its investigative muscle with hidden cameras in Canadian warehouses, explosive documents, and quiet interviews with insiders, the film never slips into sensationalism. There’s journalistic integrity here: every claim grounded in verifiable sources; every allegation met with an attempt to obtain comment. Joffe lets the evidence, not outrage, do the talking.
Yet Trade Secret isn’t dry reportage. It’s a visual essay, a piece of art. The cinematography turns bleakness into beauty: the brilliant fur, the fracturing blue shelves of Arctic ice, the snow swirling like static between frames. The score is sparse, more heartbeat than melody, letting the wind carry the emotion.
Ole Jørgen Liodden (Norway), Adam Cruise (South Africa), and Iris Ho (USA) form the film’s moral axis. Their stories span continents and ideologies but converge on a shared exhaustion: the realisation that resistance demands not just courage but endurance. Their commitment, and occasional despair, remind us that change is possible but rarely rewarded.
By the final reel, Trade Secret leaves the viewer with uncomfortable, essential questions: Are humans predators distinguished only by intelligence? Are we defined by compassion and our capacity to regulate ourselves? Or are we, as the film implies, a species at war with its own dual nature; empathetic and exploitative, spiritual and acquisitive, all at once?
Trade Secret is a difficult film, but a necessary one; the kind that stays in your bones long after the credits fade. In a city where our own waters bloom green and lifeless, Trade Secret feels like both a mirror and a warning.
Trade Secret made its Australian premiere at the 2025 Adelaide Film Festival, and runs again at the Odeon Theatre on 25 October. Check the film’s website for further screenings globally.
Tickets: https://www.adelaidefilmfestival.org/program/2025/trade-secret
Website: https://www.tradesecretfilm.com/
Socials: https://www.instagram.com/tradesecretfilm/
Images supplied by Untitled Film Works.
