Darwin's Nightmare

Darwin's Nightmare
Darwin's Nightmare promotional poster
Directed by	Hubert Sauper
Produced by	Hubert Sauper Barbara Albert Martin Gschlacht Edouard Mauriat Antonin Svoboda Hubert Toint
Written by	Hubert Sauper
Cinematography	Hubert Sauper
Editing by	Denise Vindevogel
Distributed by	International Film Circuit
Release date(s)	1 September 2004 (Venice Film Festival)
Running time	107 minutes
Language	English, Swahili, Russian

Darwin's Nightmare is a 2004 French-Belgian-Austrian documentary film written and directed by Hubert Sauper, dealing with the environmental and social effects of the fishing industry around Lake Victoria in Tanzania. It premiered at the 2004 Venice Film Festival, and was nominated for the 2006 Academy Award for Documentary Feature at the 78th Academy Awards.^[1] The Boston Globe called it "the year's best documentary about the animal world." ^[2]

Overview

The film opens with a Soviet made Ilyushin Il-76 cargo plane landing on Mwanza airfield in Tanzania, near Lake Victoria. The plane came from Europe to ship back processed fillets of Nile Perch, a species of fish introduced into Lake Victoria that has caused the extinction of hundreds of endemic species.

Through interviews with the Russian and Ukrainian plane crew, local factory owners, guards, prostitutes, fishermen and other villagers, the film discusses the effects of the introduction of the Nile perch to Lake Victoria, how it has affected the ecosystem and economy of the region. The film also dwells at length on the dichotomy between European aid which is being funneled into Africa on the one hand, and the unending flow of munitions and weapons from European arms dealers on the other. Arms and munitions are often flown in on the same planes which transport the Nile perch fillets to European consumers, feeding the very conflicts which the aid was sent to remedy. As Dima, the radio engineer of the plane crew, says later on in the film: the children of Angola receive guns for Christmas, the children of Europe receive grapes. The appalling living and working conditions of the indigenous people, in which basic sanitation is completely absent and many children turn to drugs and prostitution, is covered in great depth; because the Nile perch fish is farmed commercially, all the prime fillets are sold to European supermarkets, leaving the local people to survive on the festering carcasses of the gutted fish.

At one point in the film a local preacher, asked whether he encourages condom use to prevent AIDS, responds that he does not address using condoms because having pre-marital sex is an act of sin and against God's law. Therefore he preferred to preach to people not to have sex before marriage. As to why the local fish can't be made available to the obviously malnourished African children nearby, one fish processing factory manager explains "it is too expensive".

Awards

• 2004 Entrevues Film Festival (Entre vues), Audience Award
• 2004 European Film Award for Best Documentary
• 2004 Vienna International Film Festival, Vienna Film Award
• 2005 Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, Audience Award
• 2005 Angers European First Film Festival, European Jury Award
• 2005 Mexico City International Contemporary Film Festival, Audience Award
• 2005 Sydney Film Festival, FIPRESCI Prize
• 2005 Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, Special Jury Prize and Community Cinema Award
• 2006 César Award for Best First Work (Meilleur premier film)
• 2006 Academy Awards Best Documentary Feature nominee

See also

• Political Cinema

References

1. ^ "NY Times: Darwin's Nightmare". NY Times. http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/315454/Darwin-s-Nightmare/details. Retrieved 2008-11-23. 
2. ^ "Fish, guns and famine". By Peter Dizikes, The Boston Globe. 2006-03-05. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2006/03/05/fish_guns_and_famine/. Retrieved 2010-10-25. 

External links

• Darwin's Nightmare official website
• Darwin's Nightmare at the Internet Movie Database
• Darwin's Nightmare at AllRovi
• Les ambiguïtés du Cauchemar de Darwin (French) - The ambiguity of Darwin’s Nightmare article at Africultures.net
• Révélations et impasses d’une approche radicale de la mondialisation (French) - Paper by Frédéric Giraut at EspacesTemps.net which assesses the scientific interest of both the movie and the critical book by François Garçon