At the beginning of Green City Life (aka La belle ville), the audience meets directors Francois Marques and Manon Turina, two young hip professionals living in France whose life is upended with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. While trapped in their house under global lockdown orders Manon starts researching the future of cities. What they learned caused them to look at Parisian life differently. “The city put on a new face,” says Marques. According to their research – which lacks any type of linking and seems more like a standard Google search – by 2050 cities are doomed to become smog-filled, overcrowded cesspools when they aren’t destroyed by rising oceans. This causes them to go on a global journey to talk to the people trying to change things in the hearts of the most bustling cities in the world.
Turina and Marques’s heart is in the right place, and once they start talking to people Green City Life’s thesis becomes clearer. But it’s hard to ignore that opening statement, presented as if it’s jaw-dropping and revelatory information with little backup. At various points in the doc the two return to “Manon’s research” which needs more context and background. To the average person this plays like she discovered new information. For a documentary all about giving proper credit to the people doing the work, the instigating premise seems suspect.
Regardless, the documentary is focused on ways to make living in cities sustainable in the wake of a global crisis. The pair travel to Huerto Roma Verde in Mexico City where they interact with a community trying to add more green spaces, growing their own food, and generally attempting to reconnect with nature. The rest of the trips throughout the nearly 90-minute runtime follow similar trajectories. Manon and Francois later make stops in Chicago and Zurich wherein they learn about everything from Mexico’s freeway pillars being used to craft more green spaces, the use of rooftop farms, tiny forests, and limiting food waste. Solutions aimed at individuals as well as businesses are posited: from how the average person can make a vegetable patch out of their unused balcony, to how businesses can save money on their office buildings by adding farms on the roof.
Green City Life engages with the solutions for green urban living in an interesting way, though one does wonder about some of the credentials of the participants. The lack of anything negative or inherently political also does leave things feeling sanitized. But overall this is a solid examination of something we should all care more about. Recommended.
Which public library collections should include Green City Life?
Green City Life is worth carrying in collections focused on ecology, green technology, recycling, environmentalism, and climate change. It can also be placed in curated collections focused on sustainability. The movie is possible to show to all ages though the complex processes make it a better fit for high schoolers on up. Libraries that purchase social documentaries or productions from Indican Pictures would also do well to carry this.
What academic subjects or media education courses would benefit from this film?
The movie can be used to examine urban renewal, urban living, and climate change for science classes. It can be used in connection with presentations on our changing landscape as well as with other documentaries like Blue Carbon and Feeling the Apocalypse. Social studies classes can also utilize this to examine the future of living in a city. It can also be used to look at the documentary as a product for social justice.
Enjoyed this review? Subscribe to Video Librarian today for access to over 40,000 pages of film resources tailored for librarians, educators, and non-theatrical audiences.