Every second, another ten tons of plastic is produced. 10% of all plastic produced ends up in the oceans, leading to predictions that, by 2050, there will be more plastic than fish in the sea. Faced with this global scourge, more and more businesses are promising to recycle, including the Coca-Cola Company, a group that sells 4000 plastic bottles around the world every second.
In this film, first-time father and prize-winning journalist Benoît Bringer investigates whether we should still eat meat. As the population grows and the pressure to provide cheap food increases, there has been a drive towards relentless productivity and industrialized farming. Animal cruelty, major health issues and environmental damage are inevitable consequences. We can all see the problem. But are there alternatives?
Veganism is the new lifestyle of a young, healthy generation. Restaurants serve vegan haute cuisine, recipes for vegan cakes flood the Internet. It’s also a money-making area for research and business. Countless ways of replacing milk, eggs and sausage enter the market. But few realize that the manufacturing process involves biotechnology and additives. Being vegan without knowing about nutrients can lead to deficiencies, even death. Are we really on the threshold of a new, sustainable diet?
The march towards the dominance of GM products in agriculture started 15 years ago but where will it end? Today in Argentina all agriculture is transgenic but after 15 years the weeds have adapted and the Glyphosate no longer works. In response farmers have started using hazardous chemicals in an indiscriminate and unregulated manner. In some areas the rate of serious genetic deformities in children has exploded. We meet the families and doctors convinced that living so close farms is the cause.
We investigate the commercialization of the natural world. Protecting our planet has become big business with companies promoting new environmental markets. This involves species banking, where investors buy up vast swathes of land, full of endangered species, to enable them to sell 'nature credits'. Companies whose actions destroy the environment are now obliged to buy these credits and new financial centres have sprung up, specializing in this trade.
Beautifully shot and interweaving interviews with scenes from soy fields in Paraguay, Raising Resistance explores Latin American farmers’ struggle against the expanding production of genetically modified soy in South America. Biotechnology, mechanisation, and herbicides have radically changed the lives of small farmers in Latin America. For farmers in Paraguay this means displacement from their land, loss of basic food supplies, and a veritable fight for survival.
‘ĀINA: That Which Feeds Us’ – The best-kept secret on Kaua`i isn’t a secluded beach or local surf spot, it’s that four of the world’s largest chemical companies are using the island as an open-air testing ground for pesticides on genetically modified crops. Winner Accolades Global Film Competition.
A feature-length documentary that follows a community in Australia who came together to explore and demonstrate a simpler way to live in response to global crises. Throughout the year the group build tiny houses, plant veggie gardens, practice simple living, and discover the challenges of living in community.
The world’s food supply becomes more and more imbalanced. One billion people are starving, every second a child dies of hunger or its consequences. At the same time food production is at its peak, the demand for meat is growing not only in the industrial world. Up to 30% of the world’s harvest is ruined by diseases or pests and less than half ends up on our plate. This film reveals the causes and impacts and tries to find solutions how we can feed up to nine billion people in the next 35 years.
Living the Change explores solutions to the global crises we face today through the inspiring stories of people pioneering change in their own lives and in their communities in order to live in a sustainable and regenerative way.
Microtopia explores how architects, artists and ordinary problem-solvers are pushing the limits to find answers to their dreams of portability, flexibility - and of creating independence from the grid. Microtopia deals with contemporary urgent ideas that are addressed, and solved, in very surprising ways.
A climate dilemma in the Arctic circle ! Located in the Svalbard archipelago, Longyearbyen is the northernmost city in the world. Here we extract coal for one hundred years as an energetic and economic source, which stirs many environmental paradoxes. For scientists, politicians and city locals, Longyearbyen is now facing a race against the clock.
Off-grid is not a state of mind. It is not about being out of touch, living in a remote place, or turning off your mobile phone. Off-grid simply means living without a connection to the electric and natural gas infrastructure. From 2011 to 2013 Jonathan Taggart (Director) and Phillip Vannini (Producer) spent two years travelling across Canada to find 200 off-gridders and visit them in their homes.
The environmental problems caused by fracking in America have been well publicised but what’s less known are the gas industry’s plans for expansion in other countries. This investigation, filmed in Botswana, South Africa, Alaska and North America, reveals how fracking plants are quietly invading some of the most protected places on the planet - including Africa’s national parks.
Many consumers are concerned about the disconnect between food and health. Touched by their high school football player son’s battle with an antibiotic resistant super-bug filmmakers Jeff and Jennifer Spitz take a closer look at what is in their food and what anyone can do to make healthier choices in their own homes, schools and communities. This film shows how one family tries to shift away from fast, processed food-like substances and toward more fresh, local and organic choices.
Based on an essay written by noted best-selling novelist Jonathan Franzen for The New Yorker, ‘Emptying the Skies’ chronicles the rampant poaching of migratory songbirds in southern Europe. Songbird populations have been drastically declining for several decades, and a number of species face imminent extinction. The film explores the wonder of these tiny globe-flying marvels, millions of which are unlawfully slaughtered each year for large sums on the black market.
In Madagascar, locusts invasions are so intense that it has plunged millions of people into utter misery, ravaging and devouring crops and grazing fields. To fight against an insect which reproduces itself at an amazing rate, complex operations need to be put in place. And there are men whose only job consists in conducting this struggle...
Dangerous antibiotics, fluoroquinolones, have been destroying the lives of healthy people. For years, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration turned a blind eye to this tragedy. Washington, D.C. consumer advocacy group, Public Citizen, successfully sued the FDA, in 2008, forcing stronger warnings on name brands like Cipro and Levaquin. How can 5 pills change one's life forever?
Numerous climatic, political and civilising changes have a great impact on the settlements in the central Amazon area. Step by step the local people develop their own mentality regarding a sustainable and well-adapted life in the heart of the Amazon rain forests. In 2012, the film maker Thomas Miklautsch from Carinthia, together with his assistant Anja Krois, set off to travel for several months along the Amazon, from the Columbian Leticia to Rio Ampiyaco near Iquitos in Peru, always in harmony
A darker look at paradise in the Galapagos archipelago. Environmental artist and world traveller Billy Strong and Filmmaker / Photographer Dell Cullum, both from East Hampton, New York take an unauthorized journey and expedition onto never before landed locations of the Galapagos, to show the devastating effects of ocean-borne trash and debris on it’s shorelines.
Global warming could drastically alter the world wine map. Temperatures are expected to rise from 3° to 5°C by 2050, accompanied by a decrease in summertime precipitation, much more frequent heat waves (over 35°C) that are fatal to grapevines, increased soil erosion and irrigation problems. This investigative documentary surveys the research carried out and the decisions made by both vineyard owners and scientists to tackle the question of global warming.
Future Food is a highly topical new series of 6 x 27’ documentaries, asking how we are going to feed ourselves in the 21st Century. Tonight there will be 219,000 new mouths to feed at the world’s dinner table – that’s 80 million more people over the next year. By 2050, the world’s population will have risen to around 9.5 billion and require 70% more food than we grow today. How will we feed them? Future Food visits USA and exploring six questions at the heart of the debate.
Future Food is a highly topical new series of 6 x 27’ documentaries, asking how we are going to feed ourselves in the 21st Century. Tonight there will be 219,000 new mouths to feed at the world’s dinner table – that’s 80 million more people over the next year. By 2050, the world’s population will have risen to around 9.5 billion and require 70% more food than we grow today. How will we feed them? Future Food visits India and exploring six questions at the heart of the debate.
Future Food is a highly topical new series of 6 x 27’ documentaries, asking how we are going to feed ourselves in the 21st Century. Tonight there will be 219,000 new mouths to feed at the world’s dinner table – that’s 80 million more people over the next year. By 2050, the world’s population will have risen to around 9.5 billion and require 70% more food than we grow today. How will we feed them? Future Food visits Peru and exploring six questions at the heart of the debate.
Future Food is a highly topical new series of 6 x 27’ documentaries, asking how we are going to feed ourselves in the 21st Century. Tonight there will be 219,000 new mouths to feed at the world’s dinner table – that’s 80 million more people over the next year. By 2050, the world’s population will have risen to around 9.5 billion and require 70% more food than we grow today. How will we feed them? Future Food visits Kenya and exploring six questions at the heart of the debate.
It's the soft, natural fabric associated with high quality and versatility. Used to make everything from jeans and t-shirts to tarpaulins, oil and cattle feed, it powers a 37 billion euros a year industry. But is cotton really as pure as it seems? Claims of forced labour, pollution, and even slavery have stained its wholesome reputation, creating a market for 'ethical, responsible' cotton.
The Citarum river in Indonesia, is the world's most polluted river. A reporter teamed up with international scientists to investigate the causes and consequences of this pollution. One of the main polluters is actually the fashion industry : 500 textile factories throw away their wastewater directly into the Citarum river.
What, and who, powers the internet? If the internet were a country, it would be the fifth largest consumer of electricity in the world. A whopping 247 billion emails are sent through the web every day, and growing. Though it is thought of as a ’green’ method of communication, the virtual universe is just as damaging for the environment as it is heavy in its energy consumption.
Famous American economist and Director of The Earth Institute in New York, Jeffrey Sachs, has a vision. He intends to avoid world temperature rising by more than 2°c before 2050. The challenge is crucial because beyond these extra 2°c, the Earth is bound to experience dramatic situations, or worse big catastrophes. It is essential to divide by two the greenhouse gas emissions, which mainly come from the production and use of fossil fuels in transport, building, and industry.
30 years after Chernobyl catastrophe, and 5 years after Fukushima, it is time to see what has been happening in the “exclusion zones”, where the radioactivity rate is far above normal. This film will offer a unique access to those territories, which gather millions of people within thousands of km2
With Donald Trump, an outmoded view of climate change has taken hold of the White House again. Great news for oil companies such as Exxon and Shell. They have been secretly financing scientific studies and campaigns, which are talking down climate change and have been influencing the public debate for 60 years. New documents prove that since 1957, these companies have known that burning fossil fuels changes the climate - their own, strictly secret research had revealed this.
Our demand for raw materials is enormous and the mineral and ore mines can hardly keep up with the growing demand. Weirdly, we're surrounded by raw materials! They're in our cars, in the underground tunnels we use to travel to work, in the pavement that leads to our houses, in the bridges we cross, and they're in our homes. In European cities, there are approx. 4.500 kg of iron, 340 kg of aluminum, 200 kg of copper, 40 kg of zinc and 210 kg of lead attributed to each inhabitant.
Plastic is both a marvel and hellish stuff. On the one hand, it can be used in a variety of ways and is inexpensive. However, it is responsible for a global environmental problem. Plastic is everywhere: as a trash vortex in the ocean and as a microplastics in our food chain. This documentary addresses the question of why mankind has not come up with a solution for this problem yet.
