Environment

"A kaleidoscopic, open-ended collective portrait… a film that will be examined in the future for clues about what’s happening now" (NYT), Futura is an extraordinary documentary by a collective of three filmmakers known for their politically acute cinema — Pietro Marcello (Martin Eden), Francesco Munzi (Black Souls), and Alice Rohrwacher (Happy as Lazzaro) — who set out to interview a cross-section of their nation’s youth about their hopes, dreams, and fears for the future.

BOREALIS

A unique cinematic documentary that travels deep into the heart of Canada’s iconic wilderness to explore how the plants and animals that live there communicate and survive the destructive forces of fire, insects, and human encroachment. Borealis calls on the voices of scientists, Indigenous people, and environmentalists to make clear the urgent need for greater understanding and alliances with the natural world.

THE MAGNITUDE OF ALL THINGS

When Jennifer Abbott lost her sister to cancer, her sorrow opened her up to the profound gravity of climate breakdown. This cinematic journey by the Sundance award-winning director (The Corporation) takes us around the world to witness a planet in crisis: from Greta Thunberg's condemnation of world leaders to Australia’s catastrophic fires and dying Great Barrier Reef to the island nation of Kiribati, drowned by rising sea levels.

MALNI - TOWARDS THE OCEAN, TOWARDS THE SHORE

A poetic documentary circling the origin of the death myth from the Chinookan people in the Pacific Northwest, Małni follows two people as they wander through their surrounding nature, the spirit world, and something much deeper inside. Hopinka takes us on a journey through language and belief, offering a beautiful lesson about humanity’s place on this and other worlds, deceptively small and profoundly deep.

A SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME

Sundog lives out in the Sonora Desert on the Mexican border. He is an elderly gentleman, who lives off anything that the brutal nature gives him, be it a wild boar or the psychedelic poison of a toad. With the desert as the ultimate existential (and cinematic) setting, A Shape of Things to Come from directors Lisa Marie Malloy and J.P. Sniadecki shows the relationship between humanity and nature at a critical time, when civil disobedience is the provocative answer to the most pressing questions.

SWEETGRASS

NEW DIGITAL RESTORATION. An unsentimental elegy to the American West, Sweetgrass follows the last modern-day cowboys to lead their flocks of sheep up into Montana’s breathtaking and often dangerous Absaroka-Beartooth mountains for summer pasture. This astonishingly beautiful yet unsparing film reveals a world in which nature and culture, animals and humans, vulnerability and violence are all intimately meshed.

WILCOX

A man goes into the woods alone. We know nothing about him, apart from his military-style attire with a nametag indicating he might be called Wilcox. Is he a traumatized veteran, a survivalist, a desperate man or even a philosopher-hermit? A documentary style fictional film, a minimalist adventure yarn haunted by reality, Wilcox, from award-winning filmmaker Denis Cote, is both simple and mysterious, a non-judgmental perspective on people who decide to remove themselves from the world.

THOSE THAT, AT A DISTANCE, RESEMBLE ANOTHER

Extending from filmmaker Jessica Sarah Rinland's ongoing research into natural habitats and various forms of preservation, this exquisite documentary traces, with sinuosity and exactitude the production of a lab-engineered replica of an elephant tusk dating from the late 19th century. The film gradually opens up to reflections on ecological and museological conservation, fabrication materials, and authenticity.

MR. TOILET: The World's #2 Man

To a stranger, he’s a guy obsessed with toilets, but to those who know him he's “Mr. Toilet,” a crusader in global sanitation. A former entrepreneur, Jack Sim uses humor to campaign for something no one dares talk about: shit. It's a crisis that impacts over 2 billion people. In India alone, 200,000 children die each year from lack of safe sanitation. Jack fought for and established UN World Toilet Day, but with recent corporate pushback and thinning resources, he is discovering there is a price to pay for being the world's #2 hero.

THE HOTTEST AUGUST

What does the future look like from where we are standing? The focus of this extraordinary documentary – filmmaker Brett Story’s follow-up to her critically-acclaimed The Prison in Twelve Landscapes – is one city over one month (New York during August 2017), a month heavy with the tension of a new President, growing anxiety over rising rents, marching white nationalists, and unrelenting news of wildfires and hurricanes. Empathetic and incisive, The Hottest August offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of a nation at a unique moment in time.

SWARM SEASON

The extinction of honey bees on a remote volcanic island of Hawaii, indigenous cosmology, and a secret NASA project intersect in this gorgeous, thought-provoking documentary. With an artist's eye for details and plenty of time for amazement, Swarm Season draws fascinating parallels between the micro- and macrocosm, and challenges our understanding of nature, the world and ourselves.

BISBEE '17

Named the best film of the year by The New York Times, Robert Greene’s extraordinary Bisbee ‘17 radically combines collaborative documentary, western, and musical elements to recreate a mass deportation of striking miners (mostly Mexican and Eastern European immigrants) that occurred in 1917. Greene confronts issues of immigration, unionization and environmental damage while linking a tragic moment in American history to our own turbulent times.

A LAND FOR WAR

In 2009, artist Enid Baxter Ryce discoved hundreds of wall paintings that were drawn by soldiers who'd been stationed at the abandoned Fort Ord military base. Her documentary presents and discusses these remarkable, long-hidden murals, offering unique insight into the soldiers' lives, alongside archival training footage from the Vietnam era (when Fort Ord was active) and portraits of the homeless veterans occupying the land today.

WALDEN

Deep inside a pristine forest, we hear the sudden sound of a chainsaw felling a fir tree. So begins this breathtakingly photographed, puzzle-like documentary which follows the mysterious journey of the tree’s lumber entirely through thirteen 360° panning shots; a wide-angle picture of the role nature plays in a world defined by globalization.

RODENTS OF UNUSUAL SIZE

Louisiana has suffered from hurricanes, flooding and oil spills, but nothing has been as insidious as the nutria. This giant swamp rat, known for its orange buckteeth, is prone to tunneling and eating plant roots, threatening the fragile wetlands. Rodents follows the sometimes peculiar efforts of Gulf residents as they try to defend their imperiled land from this invasive species.

A WHALE OF A TALE

In 2010, the sleepy fishing town of Taiji found itself in the world’s spotlight when The Cove, a documentary denouncing its whaling traditions, won an Academy Award. Fascinating and thought-provoking, A Whale of Tale revisits this story and discovers a different perspective as it unearths a deep divide in eastern and western thought about nature, wildlife and cultural sensitivity.

IN THE STILLNESS OF SOUNDS

A magical documentary that asks us to reconsider how we see – and hear – our world, In The Stillness of Sounds follows the work of a renowned sound engineer and biologist who ventures deep into the forest to capture sounds no one’s heard before: a bee rubbing its legs together, the drumbeat of marching ants, the songs of nocturnal animals, for a wondrous appreciation of nature’s ecosystem.

UPPLAND

In the late 1950s, a large American-Swedish company established a mining operation in the remote highlands of Liberia and built a sprawling, modernist city, a “true America,” for its employees and their families. Today, all that remain are abandoned buildings and empty pools. Exactly what happened involves mythical beasts, the environment, the promise of industrialization, and the last remnants of colonialism.

GOFF IN THE DESERT

One of the most inventive and iconoclastic American architects, Bruce Goff’s work, which comprised mostly churches and private homes, combined the harmony of nature with the innovation of modern construction. Directed by Heinz Emigholz, Goff in the Desert presents sixty-two buildings by Goff, who was never formally educated as an architect.

SMALL PEOPLE, BIG TREES

Famed anthropologist Louis Sarno discovered the music of the Bayaka pygmies nearly 30 years ago and dedicated his life to their study and preservation. Following Sarno’s death in 2017, the filmmakers travelled to the rain forests of Central Africa to live with the Bayaka and provide a crucial ethnographic portrait of their cultures and traditions under seige from Western influence.

FOOD EVOLUTION

Amidst a polarized debate marked by passion, suspicion and confusion, this fascinating documentary – narrated by Neil deGrasse Tyson and directed by Oscar-nominee Scott Hamilton Kennedy – explores the controversy surrounding GMOs and food. Travelling from the cornfields of Iowa to banana farms in Uganda, Food Evolution brings a fresh perspective to one of the most critical issues facing global society today.

GRAY HOUSE

From a women's correctional facility in the Pacific Northwest to a North Dakota oil field, Gray House deftly blends vérité footage, stunning landscapes, interviews with workers, and fictional elements – some of which involve actors like Denis Lavant (Holy Motors, Beau Travail) – for a prescient vision of modern-day America.

A RIVER BELOW

A captivating documentary about the ethics of activism in the modern media age, A River Below examines the efforts of two conservationists in the Amazon – one, a marine biologist, the other, an animal activist and host of a popular National Geographic TV show – whose methods to save the mythical pink river dolphin from extinction trigger unforeseen consequences.

GENERAL REPORT II

A fascinating investigation of the economic, political, social, and environmental crises currently affecting Europe, Catalan filmmaker Pere Portabella's new documentary updates and expands the scope of its 1976 predecessor, positing that European reality today is every bit as unhinged as it was 40 years ago.

THE JOY OF SOUND

What impact does sound have on our lives? From classical music to a hummingbird flapping its wings to the Earth’s natural hum, this is a fantastic exploration of the psychology, sociology and economics of sound.

THE BEEKEEPER AND HIS SON

The widening gap between generations in China today is at the heart of this deeply resonant documentary about a son, recently returned from the city, trying to modernize his aging father’s beekeeping business.

WOMAN AND THE GLACIER

For more than 35 years, scientist Aušra Revutaite has lived alone atop the Tuyuksu glacier studying the effects of climate change. This remarkable documentary, pulsing with an otherworldly beauty, captures her everyday life and work.

WORLD WITHOUT END (NO REPORTED INCIDENTS)

A walk through a quiet waterside town in England yields myriad revelations - from prize-winning Indian curries to a nearly lost world of proto-punk music - in this wondrous new documentary from Jem Cohen, director of Museum Hours and Counting.

WILD PLANTS

From urban farms in Detroit to Native-owned agriculture projects across the midwest to guerrilla gardens in Zurich, Wild Plants is a kaleidoscopic portrait of activists around the world who are creating their own botanic utopias.

EL REMOLINO (THE SWIRL)

In recent years, the town of El Remolino in Chiapas, Mexico has suffered from some of the country's worst flooding. This lyrical documentary surveys the social and ecological impact, from schools that can't open to farms that can no longer operate.

KIVALINA

This tender portrait of an Inupiaq Eskimo community who are living on an island that is disappearing into the sea is both an elegy to the indigenous cultures of the Arctic and a harrowing vision of climate change in America.

BEHEMOTH

Beginning with a mining explosion in Mongolia and ending in a ghost city west of Beijing, political documentarian Zhao Liang's visionary new film details the social and ecological devastation behind an economic miracle that may yet prove illusory.

HALF-LIFE IN FUKUSHIMA

In the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster, a farmer ekes out a solitary existence within the radiation zone. This astonishing documentary reveals the surreal scope and devastation of the nuclear tragedy, and the stubborn signs of life.

BOONE

The final year in the life of a small farm in Southern Oregon is vividly captured in this study of a way of life quickly disappearing due to strict government regulations and competition from corporate farms.

PORTRAIT OF A GARDEN

Capturing one year in the life of a historic garden, this magnificent documentary is an ode to nature and the delicate, interdependent relationship between man and the natural world.

ARCTIC FOX

A beautiful filmed short documentary about the life cycle of the arctic fox. A treat for nature and animal lovers alike.

STORM CHILDREN

With striking b&w photography, this acclaimed documentary from Philippine master Lav Diaz takes stock of the devastation caused by typhoon Yolanda.

SONG OF THE CICADAS

An evocative short documentary that juxtaposes the solitude and transformation of a political prisoner with the cicada, an insect that spends 17 years underground.

MINERITA

An acclaimed, award winning documentary about the women of a remote mining town in Bolivia where life above ground is just as dangerous as below.

FISH TAIL

The impact of global industrial overfishing on a small community of fishermen in the Azores is explored in this intimate, beautiful documentary.