Sentinels (working title) is a documentary film I am working on. You can learn more on the film’s website here .
Sentinels (working title) Synopsis
In the Peruvian Andes, where glaciers are melting at an alarming rate, a mountain guide and his daughter grapple with the foreboding effects of climate change. Saúl Luciano Lliuya, an unlikely activist, has taken on a German energy giant, suing a major corporation for climate damages in his region. Meanwhile, his daughter Gleysi is growing up in an environment where glacial melt threatens her community with disaster. SENTINELS is about climate peril and the determination of the human spirit to find the way forward.
Why Documentary Film?
My career as a professor at Colorado State University (CSU) and as a scientist has been focused on studying the impacts of climate change on mountain environments and adaptations of local people. I started the first climate change class at CSU. I have built a career based on the Western scientific method, but believe deeply in the power of visual media and storytelling to elicit human emotion and drive impact and action. Through this project, I can share a compelling story that needs to be told, and use innovative methods to enhance learning and adaptation around the critical issues raised by the film.
Over four years ago, feeling frustrated with scientists’ inability to connect with the general public about climate change, I started taking documentary film classes. In 2014-15, I went to Peru during my sabbatical and began researching this film. I have been careful to learn, build relationships, understand and connect with people, their lives, their struggles. In collaboration with Teo, a local fixer, and Samuel, an associate producer in Huaraz (who are both fluent in the local Ancash dialect of Quechua), we have developed relationships with typically protective communities who have slowly welcomed us into their lives. I have also teamed up with award-winning documentary filmmakers.