Institute History
Description
Louie Psihoyos's The Cove (2009 Sundance Film Festival, U.S. Documentary Audience Award) exposed viewers to the brutal practice of dolphin slaughter. The Academy Award-winning director now bears witness to a global problem—mankind's role in precipitating mass extinction, potentially resulting in the loss of half of the world's species.
Believing that images can stimulate empathy and in turn change behavior, Psihoyos joins forces with activists, scientists, nature photographers, and cutting-edge inventors to draw attention to the dangers we face. While covert operations reveal the horrific black-market trade in endangered aquatic species, the film's broader lens uncovers the even more disastrous consequences of human activity, chiefly the release of ocean-killing methane and carbon from energy consumption.
With stakes as high as the survival of life on the planet, Racing Extinction dispenses with apathy or fatalism to emerge as an urgent, affirming call to action to stem the tide before it's too late. —B.T.