There has been a growing buzz about a new climate change documentary Chasing Ice, which won a pile of film festival awards and is now on the Oscars short list (one of only 15 documentaries). I finally got the chance to catch it at a local theater and, although I went in with high expectations, I had them exceeded.

To be engaging, every story needs a protagonist. Most audiences would have a hard time identifying with an ice sheet or valley glacier no matter how beautiful. Instead, the documentary follows photographer James Balog on his quest to capture the response of the cryosphere to climate change, making it visually evident and compelling.

Balog became interested in photography while working on his master’s degree in geomorphology—the processes that shape landscapes. That interest blossomed into a very successful career as a photographer for the likes of National Geographic. Chasing Ice is the result of the Extreme Ice Survey project Balog started in 2007. The idea was to deploy cameras to a number of glaciers and compile high-quality, time-lapse imagery over long enough time periods to clearly see the glaciers melting back.

The reality, unsurprisingly, was this was a daunting challenge that would push the physical limitations of the equipment and the resolve of Balog’s team. In the end, the project has produced (and continues to produce) stunning and extraordinary visuals that drive home the reality of glacial melt trends that would otherwise be represented by data points on a graph. Balog has been sharing that work for several years, including through a 2009 TED presentation, but the medium of film brings it to life with an intensity that public talks can’t match.

It should go without saying that the cinematography is gorgeous, and Chasing Ice is certainly a feast for the eyes. It’s worth watching just to see these remote and unfamiliar places in all their severe, crisp beauty. But the enduring impact of the film comes from seeing the ice disintegrate and disappear before your eyes. With help from a melancholy soundtrack, those scenes really get you in the gut. If you doubt that a nature documentary devoid of any fuzzy mammals can still be a tear-jerker, you may be surprised.

There’s awe, as well, and nearly unfathomable scale—like video of a slab of ice the size of lower Manhattan (and thicker than those skyscrapers are tall) breaking off Greenland’s Jakobshavn glacier. I haven’t met the sentence that can truly describe what that looks like.

The science is delivered in brief interludes through snippets of interviews with researchers. The explanations are brief and concise, running no risk of losing the audience’s attention, yet the film still manages to avoid overgeneralizing or glossing over important caveats. Those who were turned off by the sometimes sensationalist tone of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth will find no quarrel with Chasing Ice.

Political hot buttons and polarizing figures are absent, apart from a few television clips of bloviating pundits (and Senator James Inhofe’s infamous description of climate change as a hoax). Balog uses these as counterpoint to his team's tireless drive to show the reality playing out before his cameras.

The film does a terrific job all-around of reaching out to those with doubts about climate science, rather than merely preaching to the choir. Balog briefly describes his initial skepticism of climate change and how the science changed his mind. There’s even an interesting interview with a spokesman for insurance giant Munich Re about rising disaster costs, which the company has concluded is at least partly due to climate change. A widely-circulated video of one audience member’s remarkable change of heart after watching the film testifies to its potency as a work of science communication.

If you have any interest in the beautiful, frigid landscapes of Greenland, Alaska, and Iceland, or even if you suspect that the media has exaggerated the magnitude of the changes to the cryosphere, Chasing Ice is an experience you should take in. And then share.