Second Nature

A Farewell to Throwaway Life

September 2020 •Korean

Biùtiful cauntri

March 2008 •Italian

The Yes Men

September 2003 •English

A comic, biting and revelatory documentary following a small group of prankster activists as they gain worldwide notoriety for impersonating the World Trade Organization (WTO) on television and at business conferences around the world.

Manufactured Landscapes

September 2006 •English

MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES is the striking new documentary on the world and work of renowned artist Edward Burtynsky. Internationally acclaimed for his large-scale photographs of “manufactured landscapes”—quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines and dams—Burtynsky creates stunningly beautiful art from civilization’s materials and debris.

Plastic China

January 2017 •Chinese

This film tells a story about an unschooled 11-year-old girl Yi-Jie, she's a truly global child who learns the world through the United Nations of Wastes while working with her YI minority parents in this recycle workshop thousand miles away from their mountain village home town

Wagon21

March 2018 •Portuguese

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.

Holy Shit

November 2023 •German

What happens to the food we digest after it leaves our body? Is it waste that is thrown away or a resource that can be reused? In search of answers, director Rubén Abruña embarks on an investigative and entertaining search through 16 cities on four continents. He follows the trail of feces from the long sewers of Paris to a huge sewage treatment plant in Chicago.

Street Life

January 2006 •Chinese

Street Life documents the lives of Chinese migrants in Shanghai, one of the world’s largest and most vibrant cities, now symbolic of China’s economic might. The film centers on Nanjing Road, one of China’s oldest commercial streets and today a popular destination for tourists and moneyed Chinese. The street has also become a Mecca for uprooted and homeless Chinese, who make ends by collecting garbage and recyclables. These characters and their stories are the focus of the film. The central character in Street Life is a migrant known as “Black Skin.” Black Skin faces numerous pressures in the course of the film, including police violence. In the end, these pressures are too much for him to bear and he goes mad. Black Skin’s story intersects with those of fellow bottle collectors, enterprising thieves and even a young boy who has been abandoned.

Bikes for Africa

May 2013 •English

Bikes for Africa is an entertaining, insightful and moving documentary following the life adventures of Hap Cameron and Mandy Todd, and their attempt to help implement a self sustainable bike workshop in rural Namibia with a container load secondhand donated bikes from Melbourne. The film investigates how a bicycle can fundamentally change the lives of rural Africans, and brings to focus the great works of two-wheeled charities Bicycles for Humanity and the Bicycling Empowerment Network Namibia.

Waste Not

January 2011 •English

Waste Not is a film about where your garbage goes, who sorts it for you, and what it is worth if it isn't just tossed into landfill. It's easier and cheaper to retrieve gold from old computers for instance, than to dig it up. Organics can be used to create fertiliser and green electricity and yet each Australian sends half a tonne of food waste to landfill each year where it is contaminated with chemicals and e-waste. We recycle only 50% of all our waste. There is an alternative to environmental apocalypse and we don't have to wait for the politicians to make it happen. All we really need to do is be creative and use our imaginations to turn this waste into wealth again. Waste Not talks to scientists, workers at waste depots, environment campaigners, gardeners and even a famous chef about how easy it is to save the planet by simply recycling properly.

The battle for scrap metal

January 1952 •Czech

Terra Blight

January 2012 •English

Exploring America’s consumption of computers and the hazardous waste we create in pursuit of the latest technology, Terra Blight traces the life cycle of computers from creation to disposal and juxtaposes the disparate worlds that have computers as their center. From a 13-year-old Ghanaian who smashes obsolete monitors to salvage copper to a 3,000-person video game party in Texas, Terra Blight examines the unseen realities of one of the most ubiquitous toxic wastes on our planet.

Ciudad a la Espalda

October 2023 •Spanish

María and Isabel are two women in their fifties who, like many others, recycle in Quito, where there is no recycling system. María leads a collective fight for basic labor rights; while Isabel transmits her knowledge of environmental care while she raises her daughters.

Miliony na dlažbách

April 1939 •Czech

The Oxford Knight

March 2022 •Spanish

L. M. Guerra, Knight of the University of Oxford; he tries to save our world, spreading the secrets that have been revealed to him.

Albatross

January 2013 •English

A powerful visual journey into the heart of a gut-wrenching environmental tragedy, while delivering a profound message of healing and renewal.

Mother of the Earth

January 2017 •English

This documentary takes a look at Hayedeh Shirzadi and her husband's attempt to put an end to the dumping and burial of urban garbage. Due to their hard work and ingenuity, 100% of the city of Kermanshah's garbage is now recycled and the bio waste is made into organic fertilizers. Shirzadi studied recycling in Germany. She returned to Iran in order to clean up the environment, to stop the destruction of arable land, and to curb air and water pollution.

Out of Fashion

September 2015 •English

A documentary following an Estonian fashion designer Reet Aus on a global tour to explore the origin process and the environmental footprints of today's fast paced fashion industry. On the road the mission takes an unexpected turn towards trying to introduce her "upcycling" inspired product line to some of the major fashion retailers to increase awareness of the massive resource waste built into the current product lifecycle.

Innertube Antics

January 1944 •English

A donkey, putting a small pile of rubber out for wartime recycling, is dismayed by the much larger piles his neighbors have put out. He goes into the backyard and finds, in his lawn, a huge buried inner tube - but it has a mind of its own.

Hotel Artemis

June 2018 •English

Los Angeles, June 21st, 2028. While the streets are being torn apart by riots, the Nurse, who runs a clandestine hospital for criminals in the penthouse of the Artemis, a closed old hotel, has a rough night dealing with troublemaker clients: thieves, assassins, someone from the past and the one who owns the place and the whole city.