The fourth edition of Filmatique's Ecologies series features films from Radu Ciorniciuc, Fredrik Gertten, Andreas Johnsen, Su Rynard, Kim Mourdant, Julie Bertuccelli, and Yung Chang. Ecologies is a collection of films attentive to issues of climate, nature and sustainable living, alternative modes of perception, and animal life.
Radu Ciorniciuc's Sundance award-winning Acasa, My Home centers on a Romanian family whose bucolic existence in the Bucharest River Delta is threatened by a development project. Yung Chang's Up the Yangtze documents the human and ecological costs of the Three Gorges Dam, which will block the mighty Yangtze River and thus forcibly remove the communities living along its shores; in Kim Mourdant's The Rocket, a Laotian community must similarly abandon their historic ways of living to make way for a dam. Fredrik Gertten's Bikes vs. Cars examines cyclists' battle against the hegemony of automobiles in urban centers; Andreas Johnsen's Bugs posits insects as an exciting and sustainable food group in the fight against climate change. Sy Rynard's The Messenger weighs the plight of songbirds and their role in wider ecosystems, while Julie Bertuccelli's The Tree frames an enormous Moreton Bay fig tree as the source of a family's salvation.
Blending narrative and documentary forms and featuring the works of several first-time directors, Filmatique's Ecologies Series spotlights vivid and compelling visions of the current age of the Anthropocene, highlighting the destructive potential of human life on earth and its entanglement with other forms of sentience and existence—while attesting to the disproportionate impact of climate change on marginalized communities.
The Enache family has lived in the wilderness of the Bucharest Delta for nearly two decades. Gica and Niculina's nine children spent their childhoods sleeping in a hut on the lakeshore, catching fish with their bare hands, attuned to the rhythms of the changing seasons. Only this area is being transformed into a national park. Forced to leave their home, the family struggles to conform to modern civilization and maintain their connection to each other and themselves.
Suspended between their rural origins and an austere new urban reality, Acasa, My Home offers a compelling tale of an impoverished family living on the fringes of Romanian society. Radu Ciorniciuc's first film premiered at Sarajevo, where it won the Human Rights Award; Dublin, where it won Best Documentary; Zurich, where it won a Special Mention; and Sundance, where it won a World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Cinematography. Acasa, My Home is a New York Times Critic's Pick.
A battle is being waged for the soul of the road. In cities across the globe, inefficient transportation reigns supreme—humans commute in cars, machines that suck down gas, belch out pollution, and clutter streets and sidewalks. Los Angeles and São Paulo, Brazil are among the world's most congested cities, where many spend hours in their cars driving even a short distance. Here activists, cyclists, and politicians fight for better cities, seeking to subvert the corporate interests that keep humans in cars.
Incisively interviewing participants across the spectrum, Bikes vs. Cars posits urban transportation as one of the prominent battlegrounds for the fight against climate change. Fredrik Gertten’s eleventh documentary premiered at SXSW, ZagrebDox, One World Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, and the San Francisco Green Film Festival, where it won Best Feature.
With global food shortages on the horizon, forward-thinking chefs, environmentalists and food scientists are turning toward an unexpected source of protein: insects. For three years, a cast of food adventurers from the Nordic Food Lab traveled the world—from Europe to Australia, Mexico, Kenya, Japan and beyond—to learn what some of the two billion people who already eat insects had to say.
Equal parts travelogue, nature documentary, food porn and political treatise, Bugs makes a convincing argument for insects as a delicious and sustainable food source, and raises unexpected questions about the future of our food culture along the way. Andreas Johnsen's documentary premiered at BAFICI, Tribeca, and Edinburgh.
The Messenger, Su Rynard / Canada-France-Costa Rica-Germany-Netherlands-Turkey-United States, 2015
For thousands of years, songbirds have been regarded as spiritual creatures, a link between the firmament and the mortal world. Today, they remain prescient as harbingers of wider ecological collapse. The prevalence of pesticides, climate change, and habitat destruction increasingly threaten their ability to survive. As their populations dwindle across the globe, an intrepid group of ornithologists, biologists and ecologists race to pinpoint the factors that threaten songbirds and advocate for their future.
Featuring mesmerizing high-speed cinematography of these majestic creatures in flight, The Messenger offers an encompassing vision of the lives of songbirds and their integral role in wider ecosystems. Su Rynard's third film premiered at Hot Docs; Missoula International Wildlife Film Festival, where it won Best Documentary; and Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival, where it won Best Conservation Program. The Messenger is a New York Times Critic's Pick.
Since the time he was born, Ahlo has been told he's bad luck. Twins are inauspicious in Laotian culture, and Ahlo's brother perished during childbirth. To the objection of some in her family, Ahlo's mother raised the small boy anyway, showering him with attention and love. But others are quick to blame Ahlo when, years later, a man in military gear arrives at their ancestral village, informing the community they must leave to make way for a dam.
Having previously directed a documentary about children in Laos who sell unexploded bombs for scrap metal, and starring a street kid as the charismatic Ahlo, Kim Mourdant's narrative debut is a sensitive, naturalistic portrayal of childhood in contemporary Laos. The Rocket premiered at Berlin, where it won the Crystal Bear, the Amnesty International Film Prize, and Best Debut Film; and Tribeca, where it won Best Actor, Best Narrative Feature and the Audience Award. The Rocket was Australia's official submission to the 86th Academy Awards.
Dawn and Peter live with their four children in the idyllic outskirts of Brisbane, Australia. Bathed in sunshine dappled by a glorious Moreton Bay fig tree, their life consists of resplendent moments, until Peter's suddenly comes to an end. Battling depression, Dawn struggles to overcome the loss of her soulmate while remaining strong for her children. Eight-year-old Simone, meanwhile, becomes convinced that her father has not simply died, but sublimated into topiary form. She finds his spirit among the fluttering of leaves, the whispers of wind through the tree's great canopy.
Imbued with the magical realist perspective of youth, The Tree examines human/non-human mingling and the restorative power of nature in the face of loss. Julie Bertuccelli's second narrative feature premiered at Cannes, Chicago, São Paulo and Stockholm. The Tree is a New York Times Critic's Pick.
The Three Gorges Dam, once completed, will be the largest hydroelectric project in the world. It also requires blocking the Yangtze, an enormous river that runs through the heart of China, and upon whose shores more than two million people live. Fengdu, a sixteen year old girl, works aboard a luxury cruise liner that shepherds wealthy tourists up and down the river on a farewell tour of a waterway that has existed for millions of years. Back home, her parents are forced from their home by the impending floods, and into the maw of consumer society.
Filmed in a neorealist style, Up the Yangtze documents the human and ecological costs of the country's largest engineering project since the Great Wall of China. Yung Chang's first documentary premiered at Sundance, Reykjavik, and San Francisco, where it won Best Documentary.
