Is this our last chance?
Wild Relatives

Salt Ankara

December 14, 2018 17.30 – 18.30

4 Wildrelatives 2018 1 <i>Wild Relatives</i> [Yabani Akrabalar] (2018) filminden bir kare
Yönetmenin izniyle
Still from Wild Relatives (2018)
Courtesy the director
Ankara Branch of the Chamber of Architects

Wild Relatives (2018)
Director: Jumana Manna
66 minutes
Arabic, Norwegian, English; Turkish and English subtitles

Deep in the earth beneath the Norwegian permafrost, seeds from all over the world are stored in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault to provide a backup should disaster strike. For the first time ever, seeds held there from a major gene bank in Aleppo are now being replicated, after its holdings were left behind when the institution had to move to Lebanon due to the civil war. It is refugees from Syria who are carrying out this painstaking work in the fields of the Beqaa Valley. In the Levant, dry conditions and the power of global agricultural corporations are the biggest challenge, while in the Arctic Circle – where the seed vault was supposed to withstand anything – it is rising temperatures and melting glaciers.

Premiering in Turkey, Wild Relatives (2018) loosely links together different narratives and biographies, opening up a space to reflect on biodiversity, resilience, global justice and climate change, as well as disasters caused by human hand and the ambivalent efforts made to overcome them. Beauty and horror lie close together in the Anthropocene, just as they do in this documentary film’s outstanding images.

This public screening is free. Reservations are not accepted.
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