Last November, film fans watched a feature film on a screen made entirely of ice at the Stockholm International Film Festival.

Harvesting the ice for the screen was no easy feat. Two Volvo wheel loaders—an L70 and an L50—were used to harvest the ice slabs. The ice had to be carved from Sweden’s Torne River in March 2009, when the temperature was minus 11.2° F.

“The harvesting involves attaching a large chainsaw with a hydraulic engine to the tractors so that they can carve the ice,” says crea-tive director Arne Bergh. “Then the tractors drive the ice to our storage facility on the shore of the Torne River, which is kept at a constant temperature of 23° F.”

After it was constructed, the ice screen weighed around 11 tons and measured 16.4 feet wide and 9.8 feet high. Now that’s a silver screen like no other.