New Documentary Explores Climate Breakdown and ‘Protectors’ Fighting to Adapt

The stress our planet faces from climate breakdown is increasingly apparent from “breaking news” events such as wildfires, hurricanes and flooding. Such reports often emphasize timely evacuations or posthumous accounts of the damage.

A new film, Earth Protectors, focuses more on the trend of climate change and the people around the world who are being forced to adapt.

“We’re in this incredible transition, and we all feel it,” said Anne de Carbuccia, the filmmaker and artist behind the documentary.

The seeds of Earth Protectors were planted ten years ago, when de Carbuccia began her “time shrines” art and photography project. With this undertaking, she visited various locations around the world in order to document a vanishing planet, creating works of art while connecting with communities and their local climate challenges. 

^{All photos courtesy of One Planet One Future Foundation.}

“I saw how fast things were changing. That changes your perspective,” she said from her home in Italy. 

The filmmaker documented the process behind making her art pieces, and parallel to her art project, she met who she called “earth protectors,” seven people who are fighting and adapting to the realities of climate breakdown. These people became major characters in her documentary.

“It’s about their voice, the voice of that place through them,” she said. “That story of going there, and then meeting people who will help me – they all had a different story. I was so taken, I admired so much what they were doing.”

In the film, viewers visit Siberia, the Himalayas, Xcalak on the Yucatán peninsula in Mexico, the United States, the Peruvian Amazon and Europe. At each stop, communities are faced with a different environmental problem. In the Upper Mustang region of the Himalayas, she explores a community dealing with the devastating impact of glacial melt, which forces the entire community to leave. In the forests of Siberia and the nearby Lake Baikal, massive forest fires are fueled by drought. 

“Seeing these things radicalized me. It made my story bigger than my own story,” said de Carbuccia. “It’s always the same issues, and they all have different approaches, but it’s the same kind of mindset. A big underlying theme of the film is to give to the viewer a sense of how much our planet is connected and interconnected.”

The earth protectors include a marine biologist in Italy, an environmentalist in Upper Mustang, a climate activist in California and a community advocate in Mexico. They are all on the ground, doing what they can to stem climate breakdown in their community. 

“I wanted to move on to finding solutions. I wanted to be part of a proactive next generation of thinkers and creators who have changed that perspective and want to help the next generation move forward in a different type of world,” she said. 

To that end, de Carbuccia founded the One Planet One Future Foundation in 2016. The foundation draws attention to climate breakdown and provides tools – and inspiration – for people to act. 

The film is filled with stunning images of the people, communities and the natural world of these places few of us will ever visit, images of both natural beauty and collapse. 

Earth Protectors also benefits from the voice of Julie Pullen, a scientist looking at the intersection of climate resilience and climate solutions, who provides data and context for much of what is seen on screen. 

With her small crew of four people, de Carbuccia did travel around the world for Earth Protectors, but her travel was offset by editing in a carbon neutral space and was compensated by a reforestation project.

“The film is not made to please you, but it was made with a lot of love,” she said. “Love for our planet, love for choosing Earth. How incredibly beautiful our planet is, but how perfect it is for us, for our species. We’ve grown and evolved with it. 

“I show a way, but I don’t give solutions. Everyone has to find their own. It’s about individual and collective responsibility.”

And even as alarming headlines with disheartening statistics highlight the increased stress that our planet is under, de Carbuccia is hopeful of the future. 

“We have to be very realistic. We’ve already got to 1.5,” she said. “The data on the Atlantic currents just came out officially on the breakdown on the currents in the Atlantic Ocean. We need to be realistic about what is going to happen, and this is why my film is about adaptation. But at the same time, there is so much resilience, so much human capacity to invention. We evolved as a collective, and the collective is clearly how we move forward.

“I don’t have hope, but I have trust in hope.” 

Earth Protectors is now available for streaming on Amazon Prime.