From the creator of City of God and
The Constant Gardener
Oscar Nominee:
FERNANDO mEIRELLES
In association with the
United Nations
‘I first came to hear about the Great Green Wall when directing the Rio Olympics opening ceremony, which had a segment about forests. I was amazed by the scale of the project. The Great Green Wall is an environmental and social project: support for it is very important. This is a hopeful documentary about a positive initiative.’
Fernando Meirelles
(Executive Producer, Great Green Wall feature documentary)
A MUSICAL JOURNEY
Executive Producer Fernando Meirelles (Academy Award-Nominated Director of City of God & The Constant Gardener) and Malian musician/activist Inna Modja take us on an epic journey along Africa's Great Green Wall — an ambitious vision to grow an 8,000km 'wall’ of trees stretching across the entire width of the continent to restore land and provide a future for millions of people.
Traversing Senegal, Mali, Nigeria, Niger and Ethiopia, Modja follows the burgeoning Great Green Wall through Africa’s Sahel region — one of the most vulnerable places on earth (temperatures are rising 1.5 times faster than the global average) — laying bare the acute consequences of severe land degradation and accelerating climate change the Wall aims to counteract: increasing desertification, drought, resource scarcity, radicalization, conflict and migration.
A Buena Vista Social Club meets Years of Living Dangerously, frontline characters give voice to a continent at a crossroads — stories Modja echoes on a sublime album. With the support of insightful musical collaborators (Didier Awadi, Songhoy Blues, Waje, and Betty G), Modja endeavors to amplify the promise of the Great Green Wall in helping to address the urgency of the real-time threats facing her beleaguered homeland.
With almost half of Sub-Saharan Africa’s 1 billion people under the age of 15 — a population set to more than double by 2050 — and over 80% surviving on some form of agriculture, upwards of 60 million people are expected to make a massive exodus. Although the film does the groundwork for a climate change cautionary tale, The Great Green Wall provides a refreshing story of resilience, optimism and collection action. If completed, the Wall will be the largest living structure on earth, three times the size of the Great Barrier Reef — a new world wonder.
As Modja passionately pursues an African Dream for a generation seeking to control their own destiny, she reminds us of the enormity of the task ahead and that time is not on our side. The resulting journey of hope, hardship and perseverance reveals our shared human condition, reflecting a deeper moral and existential question we all must confront: “Will we take action before it's too late?”
