While James Cameron’s ecological sci-fi fable “Avatar: The Way of Water” is vying for best picture at the Oscars, his fellow nominees in the documentary categories have been busy chronicling very real threats to our own planet.
From the smoggy skies of New Delhi to the melting sea ice of Siberia, “All That Breathes” and “Haulout” each use complex, local stories to shine a global spotlight on man’s desecration of nature here on Earth.
Brother-and-sister filmmakers Maxim Arbugaev and Evgenia Arbugaeva are the first indigenous Yakut filmmakers to be nominated for an Oscar with “Haulout,” which follows a scientist in Siberia charting the disastrous impact of the climate crisis on walrus populations.
The short film, which has little dialogue, begins with stunning shots and roaring audio of the stark, windswept Arctic coastline, as marine biologist Maxim Chakilev waits patiently by his hut for migrating walruses to arrive.
Suddenly 100,000 of the rotund mammals appear outside his hut, squashed together on the beach. It is an initially mesmerizing spectacle, but one that we later learn is the result of the loss of sea ice — and the dangerous overcrowding has deadly effects.
“We just hope that we can join the chorus of scientists and artists from all over the world and contribute to this conversation on the dire state of our planet,” said Arbugaeva.
The siblings told AFP that their Oscar nomination in the documentary short film category has been the cause for huge celebration in their remote homeland.
And they are even planning to bring Chakilev — their grizzled, solitary marine biologist — to the glamorous awards gala in Los Angeles on March 12.
But the spotlight on their ancestral region is vital to conveying how climate crisis is upending life for humans and animals, in wildly different ways, all across the globe.
“We have access to that very crucial area of the Arctic,” said Arbugaeva.
“Talking from the native land, I think that’s very, very important,” she added.
“The stories we see, they’re not the stories that are on the surface… it requires years and years of just being there and understanding.”
– ‘Not enough’ –
Shaunak Sen’s “All That Breathes,” a feature-length documentary set in India’s capital, also examines how animals have been forced to change their behavior by human activity.
It follows three men who have devoted their lives to an improvised and largely self-funded wildlife clinic, caring for some of the hundreds of birds falling victim to Delhi’s polluted air each day.
Every day, crates of injured black kite birds arrive at their basement, and the quixotic trio even perform a daring river rescue of one with a broken wing.
“Hundreds of birds falling out of the sky every day. What amazes me is that people go on as if everything’s normal,” says one of the men, to his wife.
The men discuss how the birds have learned to feast on trash, collect cigarette butts as a parasite repellent, and –…
