Much like popular movements to dismantle the scourge of racism, the fight for environmental justice is one centered on overcoming systems that accrue privilege, supremacy and economic gain to the powerful while disenfranchising, dehumanizing and externalizing true costs to people of color and the poor. Films from OVID tell these stories: of people on the frontlines of environmental injustice and those fighting back against powerful interests.
Directed by Jon Bowermaster • Documentary • 2016 • 62 minutes
In 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated the coast of Louisiana. Five years later the Deepwater Horizon exploded and spilled more than 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, the worst ecologic disaster in North American hist...
Directed by LI Yifan and Yan Yu • Documentary • 2005 • 147 minutes
A landmark documentary following the residents of the historic city of Fengjie as they clash with the officials forcing them to evacuate their homes to make way for the world's largest dam.
China's Three Gorges Dam, the largest...
Directed by YAN Yu • Documentary • 2008 • 60 minutes
Yan Yu follows his groundbreaking documentary BEFORE THE FLOOD with this profile of the residents of Gongtan, a 1700-year-old village soon to be demolished by a hydroelectric dam project.
Gongtan, a historic village located on a tributary of ...
Directed by Wang Jiuliang • Documentary • 2011 • 72 minutes
Photographer Wang Jiu-liang travels to more than 500 landfills, fearlessly documenting Beijing's unholy cycle of consumption through poignant observational visits with the scavengers who live and work in the dumps.
While China's econom...
Directed by Eve Morgenstern • Documentary • 2017 • 75 minutes
Filmed over a decade, CHESHIRE, OHIO follows a community devastated by coal, starting with American Electric Power's buyout and bulldozing of this Ohio town after exposing residents to harmful emissions. Years later, the film returns ...
Directed by Evan Mascagni, Shannon Post • Documentary • With Jimmy Carter, Elizabeth Kucinich, Noam Chomsky, Vandana Shiva, and the Dalai Lama • 2017 • 71 minutes
Once a pesticide is banned in the United States for its dangerous health and environmental effects, companies are still permitted to ...
Directed by John Abrahall, Christopher Bamford, Robert Feldman, Michael Katz, Peter Krotoczynski • Documentary • 1971 • 43 minutes
CIRCUIT EARTH was produced in honor of the first Earth Day in 1970. Shot throughout Philadelphia during Earth Week in the lead up to festival, and at the festival it...
Directed by Leah Mahan • Documentary • 2014 • 56 minutes
COME HELL OR HIGH WATER follows the painful but inspiring journey of Derrick Evans, a Boston teacher who returns to his native coastal Mississippi when the graves of his ancestors are bulldozed to make way for the sprawling city of Gulfpor...
Directed by Natalie Kottke-Masocco & Erica Sardarian • Documentary • 2017 • 90 minutes
Crossett, Arkansas is home to about 5,500 people, one Georgia-Pacific paper and chemical plant owned by the billionaire Koch brothers, and a startling rate of cancer and illness. This documentary follows local...
Directed by Heather White, Lynn Zhang • Documentary • 2019 • 89 minutes
Yi Yeting is struggling with occupational leukemia and trying to obtain compensation from his employer. Wanting to help others, he begins working for a non-profit that assists workers with occupational illness and injuries.
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Directed by Bo Boudart • Documentary • 2019 • 41 minutes
A CONCERNED CITIZEN documents the work of Dr. Riki Ott, a citizen activist who predicted the Exxon Valdez oil spill hours before it happened and came to the aid of her Alaskan community in their battle to get fair compensation for their lo...
Directed by Judith Helfand • Documentary • 2020 • 82 minutes
Chicago suffered the worst heat disaster in U.S history in 1995, when 739 residents--mostly elderly and black-died over the course of one week. As COOKED links the deadly heat wave's devastation back to the underlying manmade disaster ...
Directed by Aradhana Seth • Documentary • 2002 • 50 minutes
"I suddenly realized… I command the space to raise a dissenting voice, and if I don't do it, it's as political an act as doing it… to stay quiet is as political an act as speaking out."- Arundhati Roy, Author of Booker Prize Winner The ...
Directed by Jasmin Herold and Michael Beamish • Documentary • 2018 • 80 minutes
On a journey for an answer to the question, "How high is the price for a better life?", the directors explore Fort McMurray in the far north of Canada, home of the largest industrial project and the third largest oil...
Directed by Peter Bull • Documentary • 2011 • 90 minutes
In the digital age, half of our electricity still comes from coal. DIRTY BUSINESS reveals the true social and environmental costs of coal power and tells the stories of innovators who are pointing the way to a renewable energy future.
Gu...
Directed by Franny Armstrong • Documentary • 2003 • 75 minutes
Three choices. Move to the slums in the city, accept a place at a resettlement site or stay at home and drown. The people of Jalsindhi in central India must make a decision fast. In the next few weeks, their village will disappear un...
Directed by Josh Fox, Steve Liptay • Documentary • With Naomi Klein, Reverend Lennox Yearwood, Dr. Sandra Steingraber, Josh Fox, Terry Tempest Williams, Winona LaDuke, Desmond Tutu, Ira Glass • 2016 • 77 minutes
As world governments struggle to meet the aspirational limit of 1.5C of global warmi...
Directed by Renard Cohen • Documentary • 2014 • 70 minutes
GROUNDSWELL RISING gives voice to ordinary folks engaged in a David and Goliath struggle against Big Oil and Gas. We meet parents, scientists, doctors, farmers and individuals across the political spectrum decrying the energy extraction ...
Directed by Andrey Samoute Diarra • Documentary • 2012 • 72 minutes
The Bozo of Mali are people of the water. For generations, they have lived along the banks of the Niger river, fishing for their livelihood. But climate change and drought have brought lower water levels and fewer fish, driving ...
Directed by Christopher McLeod • Documentary • 2001 • 73 minutes
Across the USA, Native Americans are struggling to protect their sacred places. Religious freedom, so valued in America, is not guaranteed to those who practice land-based religion. Every year, more sacred sites - the land-based eq...
Directed by Avi Lewis • Documentary • 2018 • 24 minutes
In a fertile floodplain in El Salvador, where the great river meets the sea, a peasant movement puts down roots — growing resilience in the scorched earth of exile and civil war. But soon these farmers and fishing folk discover new challeng...
Directed by Drury Gunn Carr, Doug Hawes-Davis • Documentary • 2007 • 116 minutes
In the small, blue collar community of Libby, Montana, hard working men and women have fallen victim to the worse case of toxic exposure in recorded U.S. history. When W.R. Grace came to Libby, the citizens welcomed...
Directed by Rita Baghdadi, Jeremiah Hammerling • Documentary • 2019 • 70 minutes
Between 2011 and 2016, drilling for oil in America reached an unprecedented peak, setting off a modern day gold rush in one of the most rural communities in the country: Trenton, North Dakota. Kalie Rider and her ol...
Directed by Francine Strickwerda and Laurel Spellman Smith • Documentary • 2014 • 78 minutes
OIL & WATER is the coming of age story of two boys as they each confront one of the world's worst toxic disasters, the prolonged contamination of the Ecuadorian Amazon by Texaco and other oil companies. ...
