Sun Come Up (2011)
*** (out of 4)
Oscar-nominated documentary short about people living on the Carteret Islands who find themselves coming under attack of global warming. Their island is slowly being covered by water and the salt from that water has killed the majority of their plants, which means food is hard to come by. Director Jennifer Redfearn does a pretty good job at showing the difficulties these people are going to be facing over the upcoming decades. The majority of the documentary covers the people trying to find land on other islands and the difficulties this causes. Not only do some people not want to give them land but there are those Carteret islanders who do not want to leave the place they grew up. For the most part this is a very interesting documentary and there's no question that it's well worth watching. However, I really would have liked to know some more information including hearing from some experts on what's going on. Yes, the global warming thing is talked about constantly and I did wonder how many of these people actually knew what that was. I'll admit, and maybe I'm dead wrong, but it just felt like this film was pushing the message a bit too hard because there's so many things not discussed. Including, if this island is going under water then what about the islands around them. At the end it says it could take decades to move everyone so is it going to take even longer for the entire island to be underwater? If so, can these people move more in-land? A lot of questions are unanswered but perhaps there can be a follow up at some point.