One Word: dir Viviana Uriona (2020)

A documentary about the impacts of climate change on the Republic of the Marshall Islands and its people.  The Marshall Islands comprises more than a thousand individual islands and islets, most of them less than 5.9 feet above sea level. The greenhouse gas emissions of the industrialised world and the consequent rise in sea levels will likely destroy the culture of the Marshall Islands as well as its territory – and forecasts predict the destruction of the islands as early as 2050.

It was particularly important for filmmakers Viviana and Mark Uriona to get to know the people, developing the together with them and therefore enabling a kind of empowerment. This approach to mutual exploration has resulted in an exciting, vivid and highly charged documentary on what is surely the most important topic of our time.

This film is presented as a part of the NAAS film programme, a collaboration between several cultural institutions in the UAE: Goethe-Institut Gulf Region, the Embassies of France, Canada, Austria and Switzerland, and the Italian Cultural Institute of Abu Dhabi. The first edition of NAAS is titled Green Reel: Films for a Sustainable Future, and it focuses on the themes of environment and sustainability.