French director and environmental activist Cyril Dion is not afraid of strong images. That, for example, of a kauai male, an endangered species, who will never find a female to mate with, simply because there are no more. That also of a seahorse locked in a plastic bag in the middle of the ocean. Or of two teenagers, in love with animal life, visiting a rabbit meat production factory. His most recent film, Animal, offers a clever mix of images of horror and the beauty of the world. As he did with his film tomorrowwhich was also followed by a After tomorrowin the televised version, it raises public awareness of the magnitude of environmental issues while maintaining a focus on hope.
To accompany him in his quest, he targeted Bella and Vipulan, two teenagers, sort of British and French versions of Greta Thunberg, engaged in the defense of the environment. By showing them around the polluted beaches of India, or meeting the environmental activist Claire Nouvian, behind the scenes of the lobbying environment, it makes them aware that protesting is not enough, you have to act directly on the ground.
Year after year, documentaries and even fiction films whose theme is the environment expose their images of an Earth wounded by clear-cutting (The boreal error1999), megapigsties (Baconthe film2001), pesticides (Goliath2022) or document all the environmental disorders caused by humans (Anthropocene. The human era2018).
For her part, Laura Rietveld is launching these days The family of the forest, a documentary filmed with the Jacob-Mathar family, of Belgian origin, but who live self-sufficiently in Gaspésie. The parents, Gérard Mathar and Catherine Jacob, and their three children, combine the self-sufficient and modern way of life. They build their house, pick mushrooms and slaughter calves, but watch soccer games online. The film has just won the Audience Award at the Vues sur mer festival in Gaspé.
While the latest report from IPCC calls for urgent action, the relevance of these films is obvious. But what impact do they ultimately have?
A little hope to live
“We have to have a little hope to continue living, says Cyril Dion, whose documentary Animalhits theaters here on April 15. Afterwards, I can clearly see that the situation is more and more complicated, that for the moment, things are not getting better at all. This does not prevent me from seeing that there are extraordinary people who are capable of providing solutions. »
According to him, the trip made by Bellaet Vipulan in Animal, far from discouraging them, rather “transformed and invigorated” them. “They felt helpless when they went to marches,” he says. This trip, which showed them the best and the worst of the environment, from the plastic-ridden oceans to the unspoilt forests of Costa Rica, “made them look at activism in a different way”. And to deal with complicated situations, you often need experts. Also, Cyril Dion is delighted that Stanford University has set up a program entirely around his film Animal. “There’s a chance that people who attend Stanford will do great things in their lives,” he says.
More than 20 years after shooting The boreal error with Robert Monderie, Richard Desjardins still believes that the film had a lot of impact, even if the Quebec forestry regime, which authorizes clearcutting, has not, according to him, really changed since. While the reactions to the film could have “brought down the government” if it had been sitting at that time, it was rather the Coulombe commission, on the study of forest management, which responded to the crisis. generated. His report will prove The mistake boreal and will conclude with the “overexploitation of the forest”, recommending to reduce it by a fifth for certain species of trees. But since then, the Quebec government has rather strived to modify the terminologies to continue to do the same thing, says Richard Desjardins. Rather than talking about ‘clearcuts’, today we talk about ‘cuts protecting regeneration and soils’, but in the end, it’s all the same, he says. The film also gave rise to the creation of Action boréale, which is still struggling today to change the forest regime.
Political action first
Twenty years after shooting the film Bacon, on Quebec’s megapigs, filmmaker Hugo Latulippe now believes that it is through political action that things must be changed. He is also committed to running, election after election, in the Bas-Saint-Laurent, although he is currently considering his allegiances.
“I don’t necessarily attribute to cinema the power to change things,” he says. 7and art is rather, for him, “a way of communicating between us”. “We watch the progress of the world, but that does not change much to the forces in place. Things change more in parliaments,” he says.
Baconthe film was broadcast a hundred times throughout Quebec, after its release in 2001. In reaction to the movement it sparked, “the Minister of the Environment at the time, André Boisclair, had a moratorium adopted on the growth of mega pig farms on Quebec territory, to silence citizens. But a few months later, the government lifted the moratorium.
Today, far from improving, the situation is getting worse. At the time, says Hugo Latulippe, “communities were grappling with plans for a 2,000 pig barn. Today, there are piggeries with 3,999 pigs, not to say 4,000, which are put forward”.
A lobby problem
Why ? Maybe the answer lies in AnimalCyril Dion’s documentary, when environmental activist Claire Nouvian explains that only 10% of the lobbies that put pressure on political circles represent non-profit organizations.
This does not prevent it from continuing the fight against industrial fishing techniques which scrape the bottom of the oceans with impunity, leaving only deserts behind.
All the lobbies, says Claire Nouvian, must display more transparency, and have more citizen representation.
Bella and Vipulan, the two teenagers that Cyril Dion followed in his documentary, of course have their work cut out for them. But what they wanted before continuing their activism was to fully understand the issues facing the Earth. To this, the environmental documentary remains of primary use.
Animal hits theaters April 15.
La famille de la forêt is currently playing in theaters.