Urbanisation, industrialisation, intensive exploitation of natural resources, deforestation, poaching, pollution. These are just some of the most devastating processes set in motion by humans at the expense of their own planet. The Canadian documentary Antropocene, l'epoca umana (in cinemas from 19 September) surveys them across its 87 minutes, capturing the current state of the Earth and showing some of its deepest wounds. Part of a broader multimedia project, the film was directed by the filmmaking couple Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier (wife and husband) and by the renowned photographer Edward Burtynsky. A team that, thanks to their long experience and commitment to environmental issues, has managed to create a work of exceptional visual impact.

For four years the directors travelled the world, crossing six continents and 20 countries, to capture the wounded majesty of a nature drastically disfigured by human action. Images of a new geological epoch: the one that scholars call Antropocene, l'epoca umana (from the Greek ánthrōpos, "man").

In Dandora, Kenya, one of the world's largest landfill sites stands © Burtynsky

Le cave di marmo di Carrara nel film Antropocene

The dazzling landscapes of the Carrara marble quarries. Here, the cutting that today takes machinery one day's work once required at least 15 days by hand. © Burtynsky

I ciclopici escavatori delle miniere di lignite in Germania

In the lignite mines of the town of Immerath, Germany, the world's largest excavators are at work. © Burtynsky

La cittadina mineraria di Norilsk in Siberia

In Norilsk, Siberia, one of the most polluted places in the world and known as the nickel city, everything revolves around the mining industry. © Burtynsky

Le miniere di potassio a Berezniki, negli Urali

The psychedelic potassium mines in the Ural Mountains in Russia. Here, the industrial city of Berezniki is disappearing, "swallowed" by enormous sinkholes opening up in the ground. © Burtynsky

Le barriere frangiflutti sulle coste cinesi

Concrete breakwater barriers, built along sixty per cent of China's coastline, to hold back rising sea levels. © Burtynsky

In the Ol Pejeta reserve in Kenya, rangers defend wildlife from poachers who threaten the existence of rhinos and elephants. © Burtynsky

The city of Venice, during high tide. The phenomenon represents an ever-growing threat to the Venetian lagoon © Burtynsky

Anthropocene, the human footprint reshapes geology

According to geologists and scientists from the Anthropocene Working Group, we are today living in a new phase of the geological timescale, called, precisely, the Anthropocene.

Placed after the Holocene (which began 11,700 years ago), the human epoch is said to have begun in the mid-twentieth century, when humanity started setting in motion processes that have caused lasting and sometimes irreversible changes. The scholars' thesis, then, is that humans, guests on a planet more than 4.5 billion years old, have brought (in ten thousand years of modern civilisation) the ecosystem beyond its natural limits, transforming from participants in life on Earth into an agent "capable of influencing the environment and its processes more than all other natural forces combined". The film Antropocene, l'epoca umana attempts to render these effects visually.

The storyline and locations of the documentary

To realise their project and demonstrate this thesis, the three directors travelled the world for four years, capturing images that speak for themselves. Surreal scenarios capable of shaking consciences, as the filmmakers intended, aware that "The world is changing at such a speed that it is essential to communicate it in the most powerful way possible to as many people as possible".

Miniere fosfato Florida — The phosphate mines in Florida. The quantities of phosphate (nitrogen and potassium) in the soil have doubled over the last century. Used as fertilisers, they have caused the greatest change in the ecosystem's nutrient cycle in 2.5 billion years. © Burtynsky

From Africa to Siberia, poaching and extraction

In this excursus, Antropocene takes us to the Ol Pejeta reserve in Kenya, where attempts are being made to preserve the existence of rhinos and elephants, seriously endangered by poaching. Here we witness the harrowing ritual of the cremation of thousands of elephant tusks, seized from the bloodstained spoils of criminal activity. A funereal bonfire that becomes the very symbol of the documentary, telling the full story of the wretchedness and paradox of human greed. A greed that exterminates and destroys, and which only humans themselves can remedy by reversing the course of their own actions. From Africa we move to Norilsk in Siberia, one of the most polluted places in the world and known as the nickel city, where everything revolves around the mining industry.

From the Carrara marble quarries to the lignite mines in Germany

From there we move to Europe, to places where human intervention has now irreversibly altered the appearance of the Earth's surface, such as the Carrara marble quarries, where machines today can extract from the mountain in a single day what once required at least fifteen days by hand. But it is in Germany that we become witnesses to one of the most shocking moments in the film, when in the small town of Immerath a charming late-19th-century church is completely demolished by bulldozers, to make way for the lignite mine that has by now spread across the entire town. Here the world's largest machines work without pause, profoundly transforming the Earth's surface.

Barriera corallina Australia — The coral reef is home to more than 25 per cent of all marine species. Ocean acidification and global warming could destroy it before the end of the 21st century. © Burtynsky

From China's breakwater barriers to lithium deposits in Chile

The film continues, transporting us along the concrete breakwater barriers built along sixty per cent of China's coastline to hold back rising sea levels caused by climate change, before taking us into the psychedelic depths of potassium mines in the Ural Mountains in Russia. Here the industrial city of Berezniki had made headlines a few years ago due to the enormous sinkholes that, opening up in the ground, began to swallow entire buildings.

One of the most surreal sights is that of the immense lithium evaporation pools in the Atacama Desert in Chile. This is the site of the largest deposit of this extremely light metal, which has become essential for modern batteries in mobile phones and technological devices. The directors' lenses also lead us into the oceanic depths of the great Australian coral reef, increasingly threatened by ocean acidification.

To close the circle of humanity's devastating impact on the Earth, the film takes us to Dandora, in Kenya, among the mountains of waste at one of the largest rubbish dumps in the world, where every day hundreds of desperate people make their living immersed in garbage.

Anthropocene, a multimedia project

The film Antropocene, l'epoca umana débuted at the Toronto Film Festival 2018 and was described by the Hollywood Reporter as "an unprecedented visual journey"; it forms part of a broader multidisciplinary artistic and scientific project. Also part of it is the Anthropocene exhibition, currently on show at the Mast in Bologna and open until 5 January 2020. The documentary represents the third and final chapter of a trilogy that began in 2006 with Manufactures Landscapes and continued in 2013 with Watermark, a trilogy dedicated by the directors to analysing the most critical phase of the current geological process and of the human footprint on Earth. In the original version the film is narrated by Oscar winner Alicia Vikander, while in the Italian version it was Alba Rohrwacher, deeply moved by the film, who chose to lend her voice.

Antropocene has been selected by major film festivals, including Sundance and the Berlin festival, while in Italy it recently won the audience award at Cinemambiente.

On 12 September a preview screening of the film will be held in Milan (at 7.40 pm at CityLife Anteo, on the occasion of the Milano Green Forum), while on 18 September a preview is scheduled in Turin, at the Cinema Massimo.

On 19 September Antropocene, l'epoca umana will arrive in Italian cinemas with LifeGate as media partner.

Anthropocene, the human epoch. The docufilm showing how humans have transformed the Earth arrives in cinemas