Albatross

On the Midway Islands in the North Pacific, photographer and filmmaker Chris Jordan documents the tragic fate of the hundreds of thousands of Laysan albatrosses that nest there every year and raise their offspring. Because they mistake plastic waste for food, more and more albatrosses meet their demise in a most tragic way.

For Weapon of Choice, five Dutch public figures have selected a film they believe everyone needs to see. At the festival, they explain why they each chose their film.

Albatross is the film selected by Marjan Minnesma, director of the Urgenda foundation. She studied business, philosophy and law, and subsequently worked for Greenpeace and the Institute for Environmental Issues at VU University, and was the director of Drift, the Institute for Transitions at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Minnesma and her activist organisation Urgenda brought the historical climate case against the Dutch government, arguing that the government was not doing enough to prevent climate change and the dangers it posed. The judge ruled in favour of Urgenda, and ordered the government to reduce greenhouse emissions by 25 per cent in 2020. A revolutionary verdict, unprecedented in the world.

Albatross is part of the Weapon of Choice theme programme.