By Ramona Flume
Each harvest season brings a sense of renewal and possibility. It’s a time to look ahead with hope, as well as honor the land and the many hands that tend it.
For decades, documentary filmmakers have told the stories of the communities and individuals who steward the land, capturing how they adapt, organize, and prepare for the future. In this watchlist of Sundance Institute–supported documentaries, Mexican American farmworkers strike for better wages in South Texas. A drought sharpens a generations-old land dispute for Indigenous pastoralists in Kenya. And crop diversity advocates race to protect the world’s vulnerable seed vaults and gene banks.
As climate change and corporate interests reshape our natural world and how resources are allocated, stories like these offer both a warning and an inspirational blueprint for the future. Read on for the full watchlist, along with notes from the Documentary Film Program staff and details on where to watch each film.
Directors: Daphne Matziaraki, Peter Murimi
Producers: Toni Kamau, Daphne Matziaraki
Logline: Unresolved historical injustices and climate change raise the stakes in a generations-old conflict between Indigenous pastoralists and white landowners in Laikipia, Kenya, a wildlife conservation haven.
Supported by Sundance Institute’s 2017 Documentary Fund and premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Sundance Institute | Amazon MGM Studios Producers Award for Nonfiction.
“The Battle for Laikipia offers a deeply urgent and globally resonant lens into a community grappling with the increasing devastation of drought, resource scarcity, and long-standing tensions over land between the local Indigenous nomadic pastoralists and the predominantly white ranchers — descendants of violent British colonization in Kenya. With striking access, the film invites audiences to consider the ongoing effects of colonization that continue shaping conflict in Laikipia, entangled with realities of a changing climate.” — Andrea Alarcón, Producing & Artist Support Manager, Documentary Film Program
Check viewing options here.
Betting the Farm
Directors: Jason Mann, Cecily Pingree
Producers: Jason Mann, Cecily Pingree
Logline: A group of Maine dairy farmers — dropped by their national milk company — launch their own milk company in a bid to save their farms. Owned by the farmers and committed to paying a sustainable price for their milk, the company offers hope for the future of small farming.
Supported by Sundance Institute’s 2011 Documentary Fund and 2011 Feature Film Creative Producing Fellowship and Lab and premiered at Silverdocs 2012.
Check viewing options here.
Farmingville
Directors: Carlos Sandoval, Catherine Tambini
Producers: Carlos Sandoval, Catherine Tambini
Logline: The shocking, hate-based attempted murders of two Mexican day laborers catapult a small Long Island town into national headlines, unmasking a new front line in the border wars: suburbia.
Supported by Sundance Institute’s 2002 Documentary Fund and 2003 Documentary Composers Lab and premiered at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Prize: Documentary.
Check viewing options here.
Harvest Season
Director: Bernardo Ruiz
Producers: Lauren Rosenfeld Capps, Bernardo Ruiz
Logline: Three winemakers navigate the changing situation of their business, affected by climate shifts, new technology, and immigration policies, in the Napa and Sonoma valleys of California.
Supported by the 2018 Sundance Institute | Kendeda Fund Audience Engagement Grant and premiered at the 2018 Mill Valley Film Festival.
Check viewing options here.
Look & See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry
Directors: Laura Dunn, Jef Sewell
Producers: Laura Dunn, Jef Sewell
Logline: Look & See is a cinematic portrait of the changing landscapes and shifting values of rural America in the era of industrial agriculture, as seen through the mind’s eye of Wendell Berry.
Supported by Sundance Institute’s 2009 and 2015 Documentary Funds and screened at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.
“Wendell Berry became a powerful contributor to the American cultural landscape by writing extensively about the Kentucky land to which he felt a deep connection. The ideas that flowed from that place through his prose made the region feel bigger, richer, and more complex. Laura Dunn’s documentary, Look & See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry, executive-produced by Robert Redford, captures his enduring legacy and is one of the few film projects in which [Berry] ever participated.” — Dominic Davis, Manager, Documentary Film Fund
Check viewing options here.
Director: Brittany Shyne
Producers: Brittany Shyne, Sabrina Schmidt Gordon, Danielle Varga
Logline: An exploration of Black generational farmers in the American South reveals the fragility of legacy and the significance of owning land.
Supported by Sundance Institute’s 2019 Documentary Fund and premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Documentary and the Sundance Institute | Amazon MGM Studios Producers Award for Nonfiction.
“Brittany Shyne’s deep care for the Black family farming communities of the rural American South, and her commitment to preserving their stories, unfold in this lyrical, durational portrait filmed over seven years. The passage of time, embodied by elders and their land held across generations for more than a century, is captured through intimate observational moments and Shyne’s immersive black-and-white cinematography. The beauty of the landscape and the tenderness of family life unfold alongside the physical and financial burdens of tending the land, as Black farmers contend with systemic inequities and an increasingly corporatized agricultural landscape. These tensions form a meditation on resilience, the passage of generations, and bonds between lands, legacy, and belonging.” — Maria Caridad Clement, Senior Manager, Documentary Film Program
Check here for upcoming screenings.
Seeds of Time
Director: Sandy McLeod
Producer: Sandy McLeod
Logline: Crop diversity advocate Cary Fowler travels the world, educating the public about the dire consequences of our inaction. Along with his team at the Global Crop Diversity Trust in Rome, Cary struggles to reinvent a global food system and safeguard the last place where much of the world’s crop diversity remains intact: its vulnerable gene banks.
Supported by Sundance Institute’s 2012 Documentary Fund and premiered at CPH:DOX 2013.
Check viewing options here.
Valley of Tears
Director: Hart Perry
Producers: Peter Belsito, Hart Perry
Logline: Raymondville, Texas, once known as the onion capital of the world, is a rich agricultural area near the Gulf of Mexico. In 1979, Mexican American farmworkers organized a strike to protest poor wages and working conditions.
Supported by Sundance Institute’s 2003 Documentary Fund and premiered at the 2003 Mill Valley Film Festival.
Watch the film here.
When China Met Africa
Directors: Marc J. Francis, Nick Francis
Producers: Marc J. Francis, Miriana Bojic Walter
Logline: When China Met Africa tells the story of China’s foray into Africa through the lens of a Chinese farmer, a road builder, and Zambia’s minister of trade to reveal the expanding footprint of a rising global power.
Supported by Sundance Institute’s 2008 Documentary Fund and premiered at IDFA 2010.
Check viewing options here.
