Film Trust Blog

The Cambridge Film Festival has been screening a stimulating and enlightening range of films exploring the environment on film. Always open to new opportunities, the Festival director has now added an exciting new film to the Cinecology strand.

Screening on Sunday 15th July at 8.45pm, 11TH HOUR (Leila Conners Peterson & Nadia Conners, 2007) is a passionate expose of the state of the natural environment. Produced and narrated by Leonardo di Caprio, the film presents us with a veritable flood of striking images of environmental turbulence, whether meteorological phenomena such as hurricane Katrina or the devastation of human greed: deforestation, rush-hour traffic in downtown Los Angeles, huge trawlers leaching the oceans of their wildlife.

However the film refuses to wallow in its depressing data. Instead it offers creative solutions to ecological problems, including powerful suggestions for the integration of eco-friendly structures and renewable energy sources into buildings and cityscapes. In addition, the film is populated with an inspirational cast of talking heads, from Stephen Hawking to Mihail Gorbachev, taking in science reporters, architects and environmental experts along the way.

Leonardo uses his big box office eye-candy status here to do a truly good deed: he has worked with the talented first-time directors to produce a polished and multi-layered documentary with a strong and intelligent message.

Read more about 11th Hour, or book tickets for the screening on Sunday at 8.45pm.