Longyearbyen sits at 78 degrees north on Norway's Svalbard archipelago, 1,000 kilometres from the North Pole, the northernmost town on Earth and one no indigenous population ever settled permanently. Journalist Alexandra Alévêque spends a little over two weeks there, hosted by a family that has lived in Svalbard for three years, to see how 2,500 people manage daily life through months of polar night and months of midnight sun. Her stay opens with a mandatory rifle-handling lesson, the same rite of passage every new resident goes through before stepping outside town limits, where polar bears are a real and lethal risk. The film follows the town's coal mine, the industry that has underwritten modern comforts like heating and electricity in a place otherwise hostile to permanent settlement, and shows residents adapting routines, food supply, and housing to permafrost and extreme cold. Interviews and observational footage build a picture of a community that treats wonder and hardship as part of the same daily experience.