Anthropocene: The Human Epoch

The third collaboration between award-winning photographer Edward Burtynsky and acclaimed filmmakers Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier continues their exploration of industrialization and extraction in astonishing scale and perspective. Spanning numerous countries, the film reveals in stunning images how our mania for conquest defines our relationship to the Earth — and how we have created a global epidemic. In Kenya, mounds of elephant tusks burn in a devastating display of the impact of poaching (chillingly reminiscent of the bison skulls that were piled high in the clearing of the Canadian plains for settlement). In Russia and Germany, mining operations transform terrains into otherworldly industrial wastelands as hypnotic, colossal, lifelike machines endlessly extract on an unfathomable scale. The film is a mesmerizing and disturbing rumination on what drives us as a species, and a call to wake up to the destruction caused by our dominance.