Presented by Halton Hills EcoFilm Fest

Blueback

Mia Wasikowska, Radha Mitchell, and Eric Bana star in a story about an intimate mother–daughter relationship, forged by the women’s keen desire to protect the inhabitants of the pristine blue oceans on the Australian coast where they live.

With images of beautiful blue vistas demanding to be seen on the big screen, Robert Connolly (Balibo, TIFF ’09; Paper Planes, TIFF ’14) returns to the Festival with a story about a young woman’s connection to the ocean and an inherited mission of environmental advocacy.

While marine biologist Abby (Mia Wasikowska) is out on a boat examining the slow destruction of coral reefs, she’s called back home with the news that her mother has had a debilitating stroke, which has left her unable to speak. Abby begins reflecting on her childhood and the immense influence her mother, Dora (Radha Mitchell), had on her worldview. Through flashbacks, we meet the teenage Abby, played by newcomer Ilsa Fogg, who captures confidence and curiosity, taking a deep interest in protecting the bay where they live. In between amusing encounters with a local fisherman (Eric Bana), she maintains a bond with a groper fish affectionately named Blueback, who becomes a reminder of all the wonders the ocean has to offer and a path to healing a rift between Abby and her mother.

With this latest film, Connolly continues his pursuit of key human concerns by training his lens on issues of the environment. Blueback is acutely focused on the preservation of oceans and habitats that have become victim to encroaching land developers. Dora never lies to Abby about how difficult this battle is, but their story finds the mother–daughter team in a personal fight that acknowledges just how much power every one of us actually has.

Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for students

Watch the trailer.

Presented by Halton Hills EcoFilm Fest

Common Ground - saving the planet one acre at a time.

From the filmmakers of ‘Kiss the Ground’ (Netflix) comes the follow-up documentary ‘Common Ground’, winner of the Tribeca Film Festival. Common Ground is an important new documentary film featuring Laura Dern, Jason Momoa, Woody Harrelson, Ian Somerhalder, Donald Glover, Rosario Dawson, Mark Hyman, Gabe Brown, and many others. Directed by Josh and Rebecca Tickell, Common Ground provides hope for future generations with concrete ways to fix a broken planetary system. The film explores how regenerative agriculture can help heal the soil, our health and the planet.

Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for students

Watch the trailer.

Presented by Halton Hills EcoFilm Fest

Thirst for Justice

Focuses on three battles for clean water—on the Navajo Reservation, in Flint MI, and at Standing Rock—united in the belief that Water Is Life. Armed only with facts and their illnesses, extraordinary citizens take on industry and government, risking arrest to protect clean water.
THIRST FOR JUSTICE follows Janene Yazzie as she searches for the source of contamination in her son's school's water in Sanders, Arizona. She suspects drinking uranium-contaminated water from the 1979 Church Rock dam spill caused her ovarian cancer. Armed with a geiger counter she begins investigating radioactive waste on the Navajo Nation and finds areas hotter than evacuation zones in Chernobyl
When the epic movement for water justice ignites in Standing Rock, Janene is compelled to join. There she meets Flint water activist Nayyirah Shariff and their struggles converge. Janene travels to Flint, where she sees first hand the similarities between what's happening in this inner-city and the Navajo experience. The sacredness of water flows through the film, with the water ceremonies and teachings from water carriers, like Mary Lyons and other Water Protectors.

Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for students

Watch the trailer.

Presented by Halton Hills EcoFilm Fest

Meat the Future

Imagine a world where real meat is produced sustainably without the need to breed, raise and slaughter animals. This is no longer science fiction, it's now within reach. At the forefront of this urgent frontier is Mayo Clinic trained cardiologist Dr. Uma Valeti, the co-founder and CEO of Upside Foods (previously Memphis Meats), the leading start-up of the "cultivated" meat revolution. From the world's first meatball which cost $18,000 per pound to the first chicken fillet and duck a l'orange for half the cost, the film follows Valeti and his team over five years as the cost of production plummets, and consumers' eye the imminent birth of this timely industry.

Exploring a game-changing solution, Meat the Future is narrated by Jane Goodall and features music by Moby.                                                                         

Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for students

Watch the trailer.

Presented by Halton Hills EcoFilm Fest

DIVEST! The Climate Movement on Tour

As world governments struggle to meet the aspirational limit of 1.5°C of global warming agreed to at COP21 in Paris, a new campaign is targeting the fossil fuel industry in an effort to withdraw its social license to operate. DIVEST! chronicles 350.org's 'Do the Math' bus tour across the United States in 2012 as it launched the fossil fuel divestment campaign onto the national and ultimately international stage.

Each night Bill McKibben and special guests laid out the findings in his landmark Rolling Stone article 'Global Warming's Terrifying New Math' and made both the moral and historical case for divestment. Three years later over 500 institutions representing over 3 trillion dollars in assets have committed to divest. The campaign is winning, but with the clock ticking down the question remains: will the victories add up enough to matter?

Featuring Naomi Klein, Reverend Lennox Yearwood, Dr. Sandra Steingraber, Josh Fox, Terry Tempest Williams, Winona LaDuke, Desmond Tutu and Ira Glass.                                                                           

Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for students

Watch the trailer.

Presented by Halton Hills EcoFilm Fest

Into the Weeds: Dewayne "Lee" Johnson vs. Monsanto Company

Dewayne Johnson, a Bay Area groundskeeper, suffered from rashes in 2014 and wondered if they were caused by the herbicide, he'd been using for the past couple years. As his health deteriorated, Johnson became the face of a David-and-Goliath legal battle to hold a multi-national agrochemical corporation accountable for a product with allegedly misleading labelling. Directed By: Jennifer Baichwal, 2022, 96 minutes                                                                             

Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for students

Watch the trailer.

Presented by Halton Hills EcoFilm Fest

Revolution Generation is an exploration of the world-changing activism and potential of the largest youth generation in history.

The film shows examples of young leaders working to revolutionize systems that have failed their generation. It paints a powerful and hopeful picture of how today’s youth can solve global political and environmental crises.                                                                                   

https://www.kinolorber.com                    

Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for students

Watch the trailer.

Presented by Halton Hills EcoFilm Fest

REFLECTION: a walk with water is essential guidance for reviving this cycle.

The award-winning film highlights transformational stories from LA and other parts of California and makes widespread ecological healing seem well within reach. Providing deep insight into the inseparability of water and life, Reflection helps equip our minds and hearts for the important work ahead.

Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for students

Watch the trailer.

Presented by Halton Hills EcoFilm Fest

The Seeds of Vandana Shiva - tells the remarkable life story of Gandhian eco-activist Dr. Vandana Shiva…

how she stood up to the corporate Goliaths of industrial agriculture, rose to prominence in the regenerative food movement, and inspired an international crusade for change. 2021.  

Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for students

Watch the trailer.

Presented by Halton Hills EcoFilm Fest

A stunning sensory experience and cinematic meditation on humanity’s massive reengineering of the planet

ANTHROPOCENE: The Human Epoch is a four years in the making feature documentary film from the multiple-award winning team of Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier and Edward Burtynsky.

Third in a trilogy that includes Manufactured Landscapes (2006) and Watermark (2013), the film follows the research of an international body of scientists, the Anthropocene Working Group who, after nearly 10 years of research, are arguing that the Holocene Epoch gave way to the Anthropocene Epoch in the mid-twentieth century, because of profound and lasting human changes to the Earth.

From concrete seawalls in China that now cover 60% of the mainland coast, to the biggest terrestrial machines ever built in Germany, to psychedelic potash mines in Russia’s Ural Mountains, to metal festivals in the closed city of Norilsk, to the devastated Great Barrier Reef in Australia and surreal lithium evaporation ponds in the Atacama desert, the filmmakers have traversed the globe using high end production values and state of the art camera techniques to document evidence and experience of human planetary domination.

At the intersection of art and science, ANTHROPOCENE: The Human Epoch witnesses in an experiential and non-didactic sense a critical moment in geological history — bringing a provocative and unforgettable experience of our species’ breadth and impact.

Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for students

Presented by Halton Hills EcoFilm Fest

A better world is right outside your door.

In My Backyard chronicles director Jamie Day Fleck’s personal journey into backyard vegetable gardening converting her entire suburban backyard into a kitchen garden. Using her personal story as a starting point, she branches out to look at the various solutions that backyard gardeners and urban growers have dreamed up and implemented in her city — Toronto, Canada. By looking at the stories of individuals that are changing their communities through local food production, it becomes evident that positive changes are being implemented creating new paradigms and possibilities within urban spaces.

Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for students