Movies of the Movement

If you would like to learn more about the environmental justice movement in Louisiana, we invite you to watch the films below.

MOSSVILLE: WHEN GREAT TREES FALL

As a centuries-old black community, contaminated and uprooted by petrochemical plants, comes to terms with the loss of its ancestral home, one man standing in the way of a plant's expansion refuses to give up.

Stacey Ryan was born and raised in Mossville, Louisiana, an historic African-American town near Lake Charles, Louisiana in Calcasieu Parish. After losing both of his parents to cancer, which he believes to be connected to a toxic ethylene dichloride spill that contaminated their drinking water, he refused to be bought out by the South African energy company Sasol as they built a massive ethane cracker industrial plant all around him. The film also follows a family nearby as they accept the buyout offer and move from the land where many generations of their family were born and raised.

GASLIT

In GASLIT, award-winning actor and activist Jane Fonda embarks on a road trip through Texas oil fields and Gulf Coast communities, meeting the people who are fighting back against the oil and gas extraction boom. This boom, which has led to the United States becoming the world’s biggest liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporter, is also fueling a massive expansion of plastics production, as fossil fuel companies double down on petrochemicals to secure their future. These are the stories of the shrimpers, cattle ranchers, former oil workers, families, members of faith communities, community organizers, self-described “reluctant activists”, and people across political and cultural spectrums who have come together in defense of the communities and coastlines they love. Join Fonda as she travels across Texas and Louisiana bearing witness to the decades-long struggle between fossil fuel profiteering and the lives of everyday people.

VS GOLIATH

A retired schoolteacher, a former oil refinery worker, an Army veteran, and a group of Indigenous activists come together to fight the fossil fuel industry and protect their homelands while imagining a more just and prosperous future for their communities.

Together, rooted in their faith, deep commitment, and service to their communities, they stand firm in the shadow of Goliath, refusing to back down.

This is Not A Drill

As extreme weather around the world grows deadlier, a new generation of leaders is rising to face the challenges. From Oscar®-nominated filmmakers, director Oren Jacoby and writer-producer Betsy West, This Is Not a Drill documents three unlikely heroes as they take on one of the most powerful industries in the world. Twenty-five-year-old Justin J. Pearson rallies a multiracial grassroots coalition to try and defeat a crude oil pipeline in Memphis, Tennessee. Roishetta Ozane, a mother of six from Louisiana, transforms personal loss into political action, taking her fight from the storm-ravaged streets to the halls of Congress. Sharon Wilson, a former oil insider turned methane hunter, uses infrared cameras to expose invisible, deadly gases pouring from fracking sites and pipelines in Texas that have been hiding in plain sight. Backing them are unlikely allies, descendants of John D. Rockefeller, who are exposing ExxonMobil’s decades-long cover up. Together, this coalition uncovers what they call Big Oil’s “Big Con” - an industry doubling down on fossil fuels while disguising the truth.

The Big Sea

Surfing is killing it. This $10 billion global industry – built on a clean, green dream – has never been more popular. But surfing has a dirty secret, and people are dying. From filmmakers Lewis Arnold, Chris Nelson & Demi Taylor The Big Sea is the multi award-winning documentary exposing surfing’s hidden links to Cancer Alley, the devastating impact of the wetsuit world’s toxic addition to Neoprene as well the natural alternative that literally grows on trees, Through the lens of surfing and unwrapping issues of social justice, environmental racism, greenwashing, corporate responsibility and more, this life and death tale of two seemingly unconnected communities explores the power we have as individuals to effect change.