Anthropocene – The Human Epoch: dir Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier, Edward Burtynsky (2018)

A cinematic meditation on humanity’s massive reengineering of the planet, this epic Canadian documentary by the multiple-award winning team of Baichwal, de Pencier and Burtynsky was four years in the making; it follows the research of an international body of scientists, the Anthropocene Working Group who argue that profound and lasting human changes to the Earth meant that the Holocene Epoch gave way to the Anthropocene Epoch in the mid-twentieth century.

From concrete seawalls in China that now cover 60 percent of the mainland coast to the biggest terrestrial machines ever built in Germany, from psychedelic potash mines in Russia’s Ural Mountains, to metal festivals in the closed city of Norilsk, from the devastated Great Barrier Reef to 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.

It’s a spectacular and disturbing watch that kicks off a new film series featuring a selection of predominantly independent films which aim to explore social and cultural topics relevant to the UAE. Under the umbrella name NAAS, the programme is a collaboration between a number of local institutions – the Canadian and French embassies, the Goethe-Institut, and the Italian Cultural Institute of Abu Dhabi – in partnership with Manarat al Saadiyat.

Its opening edition has the theme Green Reel: Films for a Sustainable Future and focuses on the environment and sustainability “in entertaining and exciting ways”; there will be films regularly ever other week over the next six months.