Chaco

Takeout

July 2020 •English

Filmmaker Michal Siewierski embarks on an audacious journey to expose the real reasons behind the Amazon forest fires and the alarming rate of deforestation in Brazil. Ranging from people’s food choices, to major political corruption, corporate greed and crimes against people and nature. Takeout tackles the facts and stories that traditional media outlets are too afraid to cover.

Xondaros - Guarani Resistance

June 2023 •Guaraní

The 6 Guarani villages of Jaraguá, in São Paulo, fight for land rights, for human rights and for the preservation of nature. They suffer from the proximity to the city, which brings lack of resources, pollution of rivers and springs, racism, police violence, fires, lack of infrastructure and sanitation, among others. Unable to live like their ancestors, their millenary culture is lost as it merges with the urban culture.

Eami

June 2022 •Spanish

Eami means ‘forest’ in Ayoreo. It also means ‘world’. The story happens in the Paraguayan Chaco, the territory with the highest deforestation rate in the world. 25,000 hectares of forest are being deforested a month in this territory which would mean an average of 841 hectares a day or 35 hectares per hour. The forest barely lives and this only due to a reserve that the Totobiegosode people achieved in a legal manner. They call Chaidi this place which means ancestral land or the place where we always lived and it is part of the "Ayoreo Totobiegosode Natural and Cultural Heritage". Before this, they had to live through the traumatic situation of leaving the territory behind and surviving a war. It is the story of the Ayoreo Totobiegosode people, told from the point of view of Asoja, a bird-god with the ability to bring an omniscient- temporal gaze, who becomes the narrator of this story developed in a crossing between documentary and fiction.

Al Djanat, the Original Paradise

April 2023 •Bambara

The death of a Burkinabé family’s patriarch and the division of his estate unearths conflict between his heirs and larger questions about inheritance, belonging and the communal customs of West Africa versus Westernized courts.

Breakpoint: A Counter History of Progress

July 2019 •French

An account of the last two centuries of the Anthropocene, the Age of Man. How human beings have progressed so much in such a short time through war and the selfish interests of a few, belligerent politicians and captains of industry, damaging the welfare of the majority of mankind, impoverishing the weakest, greedily devouring the limited resources of the Earth.

Planet of the Humans

July 2019 •English

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.

We, the Inheritors

August 2024 •German

My parents want us to inherit their life's work. We must talk. About expectations and ideals. About privileges and burdens. But also, about money.

Mezquite

April 2021 •Spanish

Mezquite is a large tree with many virtues and is in danger due to the neglect that has been had with its species in recent years.

The Last Trimate

January 2008 •English

Narrated by Mel Gibson, The Last Trimate is a compelling account of the work of Birute Mary Galdikas -- who, alongside Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey, is one of the three formidable women to have dedicated their lives to the great apes of the world -- she highlights the plight of the elusive 'red ape' and offers some hope for their survival as their very habitat is decimated at a startling rate.

Surviving Progress

November 2011 •English

Humanity’s ascent is often measured by the speed of progress. But what if progress is actually spiraling us downwards, towards collapse? Ronald Wright, whose best-seller, “A Short History Of Progress” inspired “Surviving Progress”, shows how past civilizations were destroyed by “progress traps”—alluring technologies and belief systems that serve immediate needs, but ransom the future. As pressure on the world’s resources accelerates and financial elites bankrupt nations, can our globally-entwined civilization escape a final, catastrophic progress trap? With potent images and illuminating insights from thinkers who have probed our genes, our brains, and our social behaviour, this requiem to progress-as-usual also poses a challenge: to prove that making apes smarter isn’t an evolutionary dead-end.

Haro auf das Wasser! Flüsse in Not

Invalid date •German

Breaking Boundaries: The Science of Our Planet

June 2021 •English

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

About the Forest

February 2021 •Swedish

A post in the debate on Swedish forestry highlighting the difficulties and consequences of a hard deforestation with fast-growing forest plantations and a devastating short-sightedness. The documentary shows the vulnerability in the transition to a fossil-free society where we become increasingly dependent on the forest as a natural resource.

Green

October 2009 •English

Her name is Green, she is alone in a world that doesn't belong to her. She is a female orangutan, victim of deforestation and resource exploitation. This film is an emotional journey with Green's final days. It is a visual ride presenting the treasures of rain forest biodiversity and the devastating impacts of logging and land clearing for palm oil plantations.

Piripkura

March 2018 •Portuguese

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.

Alma

May 2011 •English

Beautifully shot, alternately joyful and horrifying, Alma captures the ecological, and even spiritual, cost of meat, dairy, and leather production in the Amazon.

Who Bombed Judi Bari?

March 2012 •English

Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney were falsely arrested for car-bombing themselves on May 24, 1990 while on an Earth First! musical organizing tour for Redwood Summer. They sued the FBI for violations of the First Amendment, claiming the FBI knew they were innocent but arrested them to try to silence them. Having survived the bomb but now stricken by cancer, Judi Bari, a leader of the movement to save California's old growth redwoods, gives her on-camera, deathbed testimony about the attempt on her life and her colorful organizing history with the radical environmental movement Earth First.

The Family Business: Trump and Taxes

October 2018 •English

On the heels of The New York Times' breaking news story revealing new information about President Trump’s financial history, David Barstow, Russell Buettner and Susanne Craig expose the untold story of how Donald Trump became rich.

When Two Worlds Collide

January 2016 •Spanish

In this tense and immersive tour de force, audiences are taken directly into the line of fire between powerful, opposing Peruvian leaders who will stop at nothing to keep their respective goals intact. On the one side is President Alan Garcia, who, eager to enter the world stage, begins aggressively extracting oil, minerals, and gas from untouched indigenous Amazonian land. He is quickly met with fierce opposition from indigenous leader Alberto Pizango, whose impassioned speeches against Garcia’s destructive actions prove a powerful rallying cry to throngs of his supporters. When Garcia continues to ignore their pleas, a tense war of words erupts into deadly violence.

Butterfly

March 2001 •English

Living in an ancient redwood tree for more than two years to prevent the tree from being clear-cut, Julia Butterfly Hill captured our hearts and minds by showing us that one person can make a difference. Through interviews with Hill, filmmaker Doug Wolens paints a portrait of an intensely spiritual and articulate woman who encountered both beauty and horror (she was assaulted by lumber company helicopters at one point) during her time above ground.