More hopeful than many eco-documentaries, Greta Schiller's feature focuses in cinema verite form on a remarkable reforestation project taking place on the Spain-Portugal border, a territory called the Campanarios de Azaba Nature Reserve.
It has become an open-air laboratory, of sorts, for remarkable exercises in reclaiming the land from climate change, and working in cooperation with local farm operations to avoid short-sighted monoculture cultivations and Big Agra ruination.
Here, via selective breeding of free-roaming animals, geneticists and farmers are bringing back some of the oldest known species of domesticated horses, and they eventually hope to reproduce the auroch, a famously now-extinct ox. Carefully cultivating forests of oaks, that have disappeared through much of the rest of the world, the Campanarios de Azaba is now a veritable fountain for acorns that nourish the swineherds of local ranchers and farmers.
Pork from this livestock is said to be unparalleled—but apologies to viewers, who might have expected the production to be completely vegan; filmmaker Schiller spares scenes of slaughter and killing floors. In one area where the farmers have yet to be fully convinced (to say the least), the eco-nauts hope to reintroduce breeding populations of European wolves, in the same manner that they have with rare vultures, deer, and foxes.
Emphasis is on the careful balance of life in the Azaba. The film's rhythms and visuals (some shot by legendary documentary lensman Tom Hurwitz), suitably, are less the stuff of chalkboards and classroom instruction than meditation—Edenic and contemplative, making the viewer wish fervently that the Azaba experiment succeeds brilliantly—and, then, that the lessons here can be repeated throughout the world. Highly recommended. Aud: H, C, P.