About the Forest (2021)

An Inconvenient Truth

A documentary on Al Gore's campaign to make the issue of global warming a recognized problem worldwide.

Mururoa 1973

In 1973 Alister Barry joined the crew of a protest boat (The Fri) to Mururoa Atoll, where the French Government were testing nuclear weapons. Barry records the assembly of the crew, the long journey from Northland, and their reception in the test zone; when The Fri was boarded and impounded by French military he had to hide his camera in a barrel of oranges.

Canaries, paradis sous perfusion ?

Sixty years ago, the Canary Islands were the first in Europe to adopt desalination of ocean water to produce drinking water. Often considered a miracle solution, is this technique compatible with sustainable development?

The Great Green Wall

An epic journey along Africa's Great Green Wall — an ambitious vision to grow a wall of trees stretching across the entire continent to fight against increasing drought, desertification and climate change.

Koyaanisqatsi

Takes us to locations all around the US and shows us the heavy toll that modern technology is having on humans and the earth. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and the exceptional music by Philip Glass.

Beary Tales

Two orphaned bear cubs would’ve been destined to starve – if a man had not adopted them. The film shows the twins’ life with their new "mother", from their first steps to becoming cheeky teenagers.

Planet of the Humans

Forget all you have heard about how “Renewable Energy” is our salvation. It is all a myth that is very lucrative for some. Feel-good stuff like electric cars, etc. Such vehicles are actually powered by coal, natural gas… or dead salmon in the Northwest.

Valldaura: A Quarantine Cabin

A group of young architects, confined to a forest in Barcelona during the COVID crisis, explore the problems generated by the ambition of wanting to be completely self-sufficient.

Do it Yourself

A short film on throw-away culture and TV

White Earth

An oil boom has drawn thousands to America’s Northern Plains in search of work. Against the backdrop of a cruel North Dakota winter, the stories of three children and an immigrant mother intertwine among themes of innocence, home, and the American Dream.

Breaking Boundaries: The Science of Our Planet

David Attenborough and scientist Johan Rockström examine Earth's biodiversity collapse and how this crisis can still be averted.

In Between Mountains and Oceans

Finding their place between the forest and the sea, the Japanese have always felt awe and gratitude toward Nature. Since ancient times, they have negotiated their own unique relationship with their natural surroundings. Acclaimed photographer Masa-aki Miyazawa discovered the essence of that ancient way of living in Ise Jingu, Japan’s holiest Shinto shrine. Inspired by the idea of sending a message to the future in the same way this ancient shrine keeps alive the traditions of the past, Miyazawa used an ultra-high resolution 4K camera to create a breathtaking visual journey linking the Ise forest with other forests throughout Japan.

Wagon21

Maura is a black woman, mother of 7 children and recyclable material collector in one of the largest cities in Latin America. While she works hard to maintain herself, she has to deal with prejudice, invisibility and the ignorance of those who do not recognize the value and important role of the recyclable material collector bring to the city, as an environmental agent.

Piripkura

The last two surviving members of the Piripkura people, a nomadic tribe in the Mato Grosso region of Brazil, struggle to maintain their indigenous way of life amidst the region's massive deforestation. Living deep in the rainforest, Pakyî and Tamandua live off the land relying on a machete, an ax, and a torch lit in 1998.

The Ants and the Grasshopper

Anita Chitaya has a gift: she can help bring abundant food from dead soil, she can make men fight for gender equality, and maybe she can end child hunger in her village. Now, to save her home in Malawi from extreme weather, she faces her greatest challenge: persuading Americans that climate change is real. Traveling from Malawi to California to the White House, she meets climate sceptics and despairing farmers. Her journey takes her across all the divisions that shape the USA: from the rural-urban divide, to schisms of race, class and gender, and to the American exceptionalism that remains a part of the culture. It will take all her skill and experience to help Americans recognise, and free themselves from, a logic that is already destroying the Earth.

Atomic Homefront

Revealing St. Louis, Missouri's atomic past as a uranium processing center for the atomic bomb and the governmental and corporate negligence that lead to the illegal dumping of Manhattan Project radioactive waste throughout North County neighborhoods.

Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret

Follow the shocking, yet humorous, journey of an aspiring environmentalist, as he daringly seeks to find the real solution to the most pressing environmental issues and true path to sustainability.

Wild Feast

A wounded moose escapes its hunters, later dying deep in the forest and becoming... a communal feast. As the seasons go by, mammals, birds and insects invite themselves to the banquet - multiplying ensuing games, rituals and conflicts. In exploring and occasionally foiling nature's wildlife codes, our story becomes a simple yet poignant reflection on death, on its natural place in this world and, by extension, on its deeper meaning and purpose - important lessons to explore at this time when the glorious paradises offered by religions tend to feel less and less credible.

Un jour en Italie

Plot unavailable

The Truffle Hunters

In the secret forests of Northern Italy, a dwindling group of joyful old men and their faithful dogs search for the world’s most expensive ingredient, the white Alba truffle. Their stories form a real-life fairy tale that celebrates human passion in a fragile land that seems forgotten in time.

Suspension

In the depths of the Colombian jungle, the skeleton of an immense abandoned cement bridge is tucked away. It has turned into a delusional tourist attraction.

Born to Be Wild

Born to Be Wild observes various orphaned jungle animals and their day-to-day behavioural interactions with the individuals who rescue them and raise them to adulthood. The film unfurls in two separate geographic spheres. Half of it takes place in the rain forests of Borneo, where celebrated primatologist Dr. Birute Galdikas assists baby orangutans; the other half takes place on the arid savannahs of Kenya, where zoologist Dame Daphne Sheldrick works with baby elephant calves.

You Think the Earth Is a Dead Thing

Just one of the many far-reaching impacts of the slave trade on human history is on agriculture and horticulture. While the French plantation owners on the Caribbean island of Martinique had their gardens laid out, Versailles-style, their enslaved workers continued their tradition of using medicinal wild herbs. Nowadays these herbs represent one of several resources through which the people of Martinique counter the health and ecological ravage caused by the use of pesticides on the banana plantations. Farmers are reclaiming uncultivated lands to grow indigenous vegetables, without any industrial pesticides; they fight boldly for simple biodiversity.

Split Estate

This compelling Emmy Award winning documentary shows the dirty side of hydraulic fracturing and natural gas, an energy source the industry touts as a clean alternative to fossil fuels.

The Guardians

Interweaves the lives of the threatened monarch butterfly with an indigenous community in Mexico fighting to restore the forest they nearly destroyed.

Rodents of Unusual Size

After decades of hurricanes and oil spills, Louisiana faces a new threat - hordes of monstrous 20 pound swamp rats. Known as "nutria", these invasive South American rodents breed faster than bounty hunters can "control" them. With their orange teeth and voracious appetite they are eating up the coastal wetlands that protects Thomas and his town of Delacroix Island from hurricanes, but the people who have lived here for generations will not give up without a fight.

Decommissioning Fukushima: The Battle to Contain Radioactivity

TEPCO's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant is the site of one of history's worst nuclear disasters: the meltdown of three nuclear reactors. The decommissioning program in Japan learns from the Three Mile Island decommissioning in the US after the nuclear plant accident in 1976 in Pennsylvania.

When Glaciers Go

A diminishing water supply is driving people from their land in a remote region of Nepal. The younger generation of the Gurung family adapts by commuting from their ancestral home, where subsistence depends on grazing goats and cows, to a village that has a commercial apple orchard, fed by irrigation. “We cannot give up cultivating our fields,” a elderly man explains. “The apple farm is not going to be able to feed us easily.” The older generation believes that water shortages stem from road building and bulldozing, upsetting the natural order, a young man explains. Both generations fly prayer flags, beseeching water.

Troubled Waters: A Turtle's Tale

Exploring the impact of human behavior on our environment from the perspective of one of South Florida's most beloved and fragile underwater creatures: the sea turtle. A critical look at the effects of global warming, water pollution, and our "throw-away" plastic lifestyle on this keystone species...and inevitably ourselves.