Film Highlights from SYRCL’s 2025 Wild & Scenic Film Festival

Note: Reviews written by film critic Jason Sacks

One of the true pleasures of traveling is to journey to places far away and experience life as it is there. My wife and I love to get out and experience the natural beauty of distant lands, walk through exotic landscapes, and glimpse local wildlife. Many of the most entertaining and interesting films at this year’s Wild and Scenic Film Festival, held this year from February 13 to 17 in Nevada City and Grass Valley, allow viewers to virtually travel to distant places and see peoples’ complex interactions with nature and climate change, up close and personal.

Turtle Walker tells the story of Satish Bhaskar, an Indian man who undertakes an epic lifetime journey to explore the complex lives of sea turtles, especially their nesting cycles on the remote and spectacular Andaman and Nicobar islands. Bhaskar is deeply motivated by his love for these massive and gorgeous creatures, and his undeniable passion flows from every frame of the film. His passion drags the viewer along, making us feel like we are in the room with Bhaskar as he shares his life story.

There is some sensationally gorgeous photography of rainbow sunsets and leatherback turtles in motion. I often found myself wondering how some of these shots were created. But like all good documentaries, Turtle Walker takes unexpected twists as it plays out. While the turtles are the motivations for the story, Bhaskar’s health, aging and loneliness are always in the background and those elements help to keep this story human. He singlehandedly drove the creation of many of the endangered species laws in India. What a hero.

Valve Turners also focuses on people, but this time the people are far more controversial than the frankly saintly Satish Bhaskar. No, the protagonists of Valve Turners are saboteurs, monkey-wrenchers who take a daring stand against the fossil fuel community. This group of mostly older people – kindly seeming grandparents and retirees decide they must take action against the flow of oil sands flowing from Canada.

Valve Turners is one of those brave sorts of citizen journalism and rebellion which feels so vital in our era of climate change. As viewers we are left to wonder if we can or should take the steps these ordinary people – people devoted to their families and communities and who attend church faithfully – take to help fight climate change. Are these heroes or are they dupes who took their anger too far? The narrative, as directed by Steve Bonds-Liptay, never really chooses sides in the argument, instead chronicling the crimes and subsequent trials in a declarative style.

Among the Wolves is similarly deadpan, and another film where viewers will be wondering how it was made. Somewhere in the no-man’s-land between Russia and Finland, Yves the painter and Olivier the photographer sit motionless and silent in a tiny cabin overlooking a large field and forest, hoping to eventually blend in and catch sight of wolves in their natural habitat.

It’s no spoiler to say that Yves and Olivier eventually do see wolves, not to mention a wolverine, a sea eagle, moose and many other creatures. The biggest takeaway from this film, though, is the essentialness of patience and sense of humor required to watch for these majestic creatures. This film also takes unexpected twists and turns, and the ending provides a remarkable sense of closure.

The wolves in Among the Wolves are hard to find, but the wildlife in Polar Bear Country is everywhere to see in the small town of Churchill, Manitoba, Canada. Situated on the western edge of Hudson’s Bay, Churchill is a uniquely amazing place to see wildlife. I’m already considering a trip there during summer migration season to see the hundreds of beluga whales which swim the Bay waters – not to mention the hundreds of polar bears and other winter creatures who walk across the frozen Bay in the winter.

This short doc touches a bit on climate change, as it must.  The unique pleasures of Churchill may have a limited lifespan. That short lifespan is the trauma of climate change on a very small scale. Polar Bear Country reads a bit like a beckoning for tourists, in fact, with talking heads expounding on the town’s friendliness and fun, but what a place to visit for anyone who wants to see a vanishing and singular part of the world.

Climate change is an overwhelming threat, and nearly all the documentaries I watched from the festival touch on that horror in one way or another. The short film Black Water shows how changes can be effected on a small scale, anyway, so individual groups of people can help make massive change in their lives. This short film is the wonderful story of how the elders of a small village on Lake Mai Ndombe in Western Democratic Republic of the Congo come together to fight overfishing.

For many years, Lake Mai Ndombe was able to provide a seemingly endless source of food for locals in the area. But in a tragic case of unintended consequences, the mosquito nets provided to prevent malaria ended up being adapted as fishing nets which nearly wiped out the population. Black Water shows how the wise members of the village came together and created a sustainable fish farm near the lake, an eco-friendly way to ensure fresh fish can feed the children of the village for generations. It’s wonderful to be reminded of the resiliency and creativity of humanity, and to see a whole culture saved from near starvation.

Jason Sacks is a film and pop culture critic of many years standing, as well as an inveterate hiker, biker, runner and traveler. Jason has written for numerous publications including Amazing Heroes, Comics Bulletin and SOLRAD. Jason has also published several books on the history of American comic books. If he’s not on the hiking trail, you can find Jason at a local film festival or movie theatre.