INTERVIEW: Otto and Ludovic Brockway on the perils facing planet Earth
Photo: Eating Our Way to Extinction looks at the destruction of planet Earth. Photo courtesy of filmmakers / Provided by MPRM with permission.
Otto and Ludovic Brockway, two documentarian brothers, care deeply about the planet and are troubled by its current trajectory. Rather than sitting back and watching the destruction, they have decided to take an activist role, grab their cameras and attempt to bring about real change. The result of their collaboration is the new film Eating Our Way to Extinction, which plays a one-night-only screening Thursday, Sept. 16, courtesy of Fathom Events in the United States.
The film looks at the destruction of the planet from many different angles. Climate change is covered and all that entails, including threatening storms, droughts, loss of life and property, Indigenous culture, and of course warming temperatures. They also turn an eye toward large-scale livestock farming and their desire to have more people consider a plant-based diet. Along the way, they interview many luminaries, including Tony Robbins, Sir Richard Branson (a family connection), Sylvia Earle, and many scientists and researchers. They even employed their sister-in-law, Oscar winner Kate Winslet, to record the narration and executive produce.
“Maybe about five or six years ago, we kind of had the idea [for the film],” Otto said in a recent phone interview. “The planet is clearly heading on a seemingly bad path. … When you put it all together, it paints not such a pretty picture. We felt that documentaries are an incredibly powerful way to create positive social change, so it had to be done basically.”
Otto said that he loves documentaries, and when he watches a gripping film, he gives himself over to the narrative for the 90 or so minutes. He is looking to be entertained, engaged and educated, and he often finds himself watching until the very end in order to figure out the mystery. This love for the art form influenced how he and Ludovic created Eating Our Way to Extinction.
“If it’s a good story, it’ll keep you engaged, but at the same time, you come away having taken something from that,” Otto said. “We’re talking about the entire planet here and the future of everyone and all the species, but I think it’s actually an incredibly simple message. If one makes a simple change to one’s diet by moving toward a plant-based diet, it can actually have an incredibly powerful effect on many different levels, so in the film we try to look at all the different reasons why this is. We’ve tried to kind of condense it into a very simple, easy to digest way.”
Ludovic said that he and his brother work hand in hand. Ludovic has a background in cinematography, while Otto is a talented writer. For the past several years, Otto has been telling Ludovic about the idea for this film, and eventually they decided to team up and get it done. “So I think you’ve got blended co-directing,” Ludovic said. “I think we keep it real with each other, which is nice. That’s the beauty of working with family.”
Otto added: “The two of us have been making films and documentaries now for many years, but I think maybe about 15 years ago, traveling around the world, we really saw firsthand much of the devastation that has been happening to the world … whether it’s seeing that the Arctic is kind of almost disappeared or whether it’s seeing the Amazon just completely drying out, what was once a lush rainforest with deafening calls of all the biodiversity now turning to this dried out, dying forest. I think that really moved us into this idea that we really are living in a time when the world is changing and not in such a good way.”
For Ludovic, when he looks at something like a single tree, he doesn’t see a commodity or a need to tear it down. He views the living organism as a life form that hosts many different creatures. That viewpoint makes the destruction of that tree that much more difficult to bear.
“When you hear them fall, the snapping sounds, the ground is rumbling, and the eruption of the wildlife, it was really quite heartbreaking for us to see and feel that,” Ludovic said. “Hopefully we try to get a bit of that into the film, but you know they are coming down, and it’s coming down fast. That’s incredibly frightening for us.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Eating Our Way to Extinction, directed by Otto and Ludovic Brockway, will play Thursday, Sept. 16 in movie theaters, courtesy of Fathom Events. Click here for more information.
