This will be one of many reviews during this year’s Hot Docs Film Festival, to keep up with our latest coverage, click here.
Director Sasha Wortzel is a native of the Everglades, a wetland region in Florida located thirty minutes away from Miami. In her latest film, River of Grass, Wortzel borrows the words of environmentalist Marjory Stoneman Douglas to expose the problems in her homeland. To do this, the director mixes archival footage, nature shots, poetry, and interviews from fellow natives to compose her exposé. At the same time, the film is a denunciation and a homage to where she grew up and loved deeply.
In the first minutes, the film seems unfocused and confusing. There are multiple shots of water, alligators swimming, and mentions of Douglas. It feels like a mixture of random elements to tell a story. However, Wortzel introduces her and her connection to the Everglades. The heir of the Miami Herald, a major news outlet in the area, she was also working there as a journalist. A few years later, she would go on to buy land on the Everglades and build a house without room separation, featuring plenty of space to live in. There, she wrote most of her work, becoming a great defender of the river and its importance.
On the other hand, River of Grass approaches its focus on the Everglades River from three different fronts, following Douglas and her story, Wortzel in the present, and the issue of sugarcanes. The latter is present through protests involving local residents who suffer from pollution caused by sugarcane burning, a process in the production of sugar. Through these three fronts, the film creates a parallel portrayal of the Everglades that helps to shed light on the pollution of the air and water. Accordingly, industrial plants and the city of Miami deposit their own debris into the river; meanwhile, natural disasters such as hurricanes mix harmful chemicals and spread them to different parts of the Everglades. As a result, that contamination threatens the quality of the local wildlife and the human populations living near the river margins, especially minority communities.
Among the heartbreaking realities of a future that threatened to put the wetland in jeopardy is the lack of public policies in place to protect them. As a means to construct her documentary, Wortzel uses poetic devices. Excerpts from Douglas’ works print their lines against the limpid Florida skies. It creates a breather between her idealistic calm, hoping that the Everglades National Park would protect and save the wetland. In turn, this notion contrasts with the pessimistic prognosis of the future, with a river on life support. Wortzel imposes her life story, Douglas, and a whole community to measure the immensity of the river of grass.
In the end, River of Grass takes time to adequately balance its different storylines. Yet, director Sasha Wortzel understands the humane necessity of those waters, not only as a means of survival, but also because of their roots and legacy. She thrives by writing poetry to broaden her feelings and history with the Everglades. The byproduct is an homage to Marjory Stoneman Douglas and a wish letter screaming for help to save her home.
Score: 70/100
still courtesy of Hot Docs
If you liked this, please read our other reviews here and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter or Instagram or like us on Facebook.
Brazilian film writer. He is also a producer and executive producer for Zariah Filmes. Member of the International Film Society Critics Association (IFSCA), International Documentary Association (IDA), and Gotham and Media Film Institute.
Discover more from
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
