Film maker raises funds for Kiribati climate doco

Transcript

A Canada-based Swiss film maker has started a crowd funding appeal to help finance the final leg of his two-year journey documenting the outgoing Kiribati President Anote Tong's campaign to save his people from the negative effects of climate change.

Matthieu Rytz flew into Kiribati earlier this month to film the final chapter of "Anote's Ark" which will premiere early this year but needs $50,000 to cover costs of the final shoot as well as translation, editing and post-production costs.

Mr Rytz told Koroi Hawkins he hopes the film will show the world the effect of its inaction.

MATTHIEU RYTZ: And really what I want to achieve with this movie is raising awareness not so much about climate change because climate change now a lot of people are aware but um the awareness of those people on the front-line they have the smallest footprint in the world but they are the first victims basically of Global consumptions and they have a situation where basically within the century they don't have anymore land to live on so they are going to have to move and for me also it is a symbol of what is going to happen to humanity in the next century. Big big migration due to climate change so it is more about like the relationship between human beings and the land and what happens when they lose the land.

KOROI HAWKINS: And this documentary this film has taken you to many places across the world what has been most difficult about producing it?

MR: I mean in terms of purely production it has been very fast because I just met with the president two years ago and he is on the last term of his presidency and running to the COP 21 that just happened in Paris. So it was I just had to jump onto the project without any preparation because this kind of movie should have been taking like few years ago and getting ready with all the production so most of the time I was just like following the president as part of the delegation and hoping to get access and it has been an incredible journey going to meet with Pope Francis going to meet with all the head of states around the world and just like having this, all of this inside of global politics and how things goes. And also realise how politics works and how crazy the situation is having head of states like telling all the world powers that he won't have a country within 50 years or 100 years and somehow nobody listening.

KH: What most affected you about being in Kiribati and seeing the plight of the people?

MR: They have their own lifestyle their own culture and they are really really linked to their homeland. So for me it is like to see them basically being victim to something they never even contribute to is something that has really given me a very strong feeling actually of we need to tell the story.