Under increasing threats from rampant deforestation and climate change, portions of the Amazon now emit more carbon to the atmosphere than they absorb. The southern Amazon, in particular, has become hotter and drier, with less soil moisture, lowered water tables, and a higher than normal rate of tree mortality. Scientists now believe the Amazon could reach its tipping point — when it loses its natural ability to regenerate and will become permanently degraded — as soon as 2050. The impacts will reverberate globally.
Last summer, filmmakers Fer Ligabue, Jacqueline Lisboa, and Solange Azevedo, working with the World Wide Fund for Nature-Brazil, visited eastern Mato Grosso, filming dramatic aerial images of forest that gives way to vast tracts of land cleared and burned for agriculture. They interviewed scientists who study the forest’s response to increased drought and heat and Indigenous leaders who, surrounded by encroaching ranches, roads, and energy infrastructure, feel as if they are being “suffocated.” Already, plants and animals that provide them with sustenance are disappearing.
“Nature is giving us a sign,” Beatriz Schwantes Marimon, a plant ecologist at the State University of Mato Grosso, tells the filmmakers. “‘I’m not well. I’m dying.’”
About the Filmmakers: Fer Ligabue is a cinematographer and documentary filmmaker who has worked with O2 Filmes, Teatro Oficina, and Filmes para Bailar. Jacqueline Lisboa is a photojournalist who has worked with Metrópoles, Reuters, and AGIF, and is the photo and video lead at WWF-Brazil. Solange Azevedo is an award-winning journalist who focuses on human rights and the environment.
About the Contest: Now in its 12th season, the Yale Environment 360 Film Contest honors the year’s best environmental documentaries, with the aim of recognizing work that has not previously been widely seen. This year we received 613 submissions from more than 80 countries across six continents, with the winners selected by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Kolbert, Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Thomas Lennon, and e360’s editor-in-chief Roger Cohn.
