Award-Winning Films For A Sustainable Future

The drought and the lack of water supplies in the capital city of Iran (Tehran), is a horrendous problem nowadays. The lakes of Tehran's area are all dried, some of the farmers have got to irrigate their farms by a kind of drainage to produce adequate harvest. This documentary proves that these problems have historical reasons and background in the political history of Iran in the last century. In addition to this historical and scientific view, The director shows that the fear of drought and famine in Iran is one of the major issues in Persian mythologies and legends. Narration of the film uses a poetic language to combine a mythological story about drought with the historical realities according to this specific topic: There's a dreadful dragon in Persian mythology, who is immortal and responsible for drought. Water crisis in Tehran contemporary history is a major problem too; and a dry land is a sign of the return of the dragon.

In the field, we accompany a biologist responsible for the implementation of renaturation solutions, the most coherent with the activities already present. A series of hedgerows planted to ensure bocage continuity is a typical means of providing food and shelter for small mammals involved in an ecosystem that includes cultivated fields and wild lands. Compromises are made to allow continued passage with farm machinery. The viewer discovers that it is possible to observe significant changes in biodiversity if one is attentive to the smallest phenomena, such as the return of butterflies that had disappeared. Through the testimonies of involved farmers, we learn that synergies between animals, plants and farms increasingly make it possible to do without chemical substitutes, those that have long accompanied the productivist approach on which agriculture is still largely dependent. From the scouting in the middle of winter, to the informal meetings between participants discussing in the middle of the heat wave, the film shows from the inside an experience of active awareness but not without its paradoxes. How to reconcile issues as remote as profitability and biodiversity.

Decades of mismanagement, environmental changes and a burgeoning population have created tensions for the 40 million people living on the shores of the world's second largest freshwater lake, Lake Victoria. Desperate fishermen use illegal nets and overfish the East African lake's dwindling stocks, while many fishermen have had to turn to other forms of work - much of which has a detrimental impact on the health of the lake and its residents. Lake Victoria: An Ecosystem in Turmoil follows some of those trying to eek out a living on the lake: a Kenyan fisherman who illegally crosses the border into Uganda in the search for fish; a Ugandan who gave up fishing to become a palm oil farmer; and a Tanzanian gold miner using mercury with his bare hands to extract the precious mineral from unregulated mines on the lake's shores. But how well do they comprehend the pressure that they’re putting on the lake, and can the regional governments and communities take action before irreversible damage happens?

Humans have exploited Earth to the point where it is no longer possible to live on it. Their only option is to relocate to Mars. When the last group of people has boarded the spaceship for the red planet, the Earth can finally breathe easy. Like an expressionist painting, Reboot depicts a world in which the absence of our species is the only chance nature has to recover its lushness and flourish once more.