The boy Minik was the only one of six Inuit who survived being put on exhibition 1897 in a New York museum by the American Robert E. Peary - the first to conquer the North Pole.

The story unfolds in the tension between the American who spent 23 years among the polar Eskimos in order to conquer the North Pole, and Minik. In the film's contemporary level, the young polar Eskimo Robert E. Peary II, a great-grandchild of the arctic explorer, goes on an expedition into his ancestor's history, which takes him back to the United States, to Greenland and to the North Pole.

Peary was obsessed, and like other obsessed men - people around him had to pay a high price. Forced by his sponsors he had to supply them with treasures from the far north. This was during the era when museums in the western world were busy collecting and categorising artefacts from all over the world. One year Peary brought six living Eskimos to his sponsor The American Museum of Natural History in New York. Among them the six year old boy Minik. Except for Minik all Eskimos die, including his father. The tragedy goes further when Minik finds out that his foster father is responsible for the preparation of his birth fathers skeleton.

This film is a straight forward story. The way of telling it is to go with Robert Peary II - the great grand son of Robert Peary - to America, on the spots where things happened in the past. When Robert Peary II knows things about his great grand father and people around him, he will then go back to Greenland to be confronted with his own past. By following Robert in a reportage style, scenes will unfold in front of the camera, when he is approaching people to find out the double life of Robert Peary, what happened to the Eskimos in New York and what the actual fate was of Minik after he left Greenland.
Robert Peary II, who shares the fate of the victim, Minik, and the genes of the perpetrator, Robert Peary - sets out to explore The Prize of the Pole.

Odense (comp.), CPH:DOX (Winner Special Award), HotDocs, Gothenborg, Prague, Thessaloniki, DocAviv (comp.), Warsaw, Trento (Gold Gentian Award), Bergen, Toronto, Vancouver

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