UNEARTH

Bristol Bay is the largest wild salmon ecosystem on Earth. UNEARTH is a film about the people protecting it.

The first time the Strickland brothers called me, Auberin and Dunedin, fishermen out of Alaska, they explained that Pebble was working to turn one of the most beautiful and fully functioning ecosystems on the planet into the largest open-pit mine in North America. Within a week we had begun production of what became UNEARTH.

I had spent the previous decade shooting important films about what we'd lost or were losing. The chance to film something still intact, a place where the fix was simply to leave it alone, was what motivated me to take on the challenge.

Every documentary reaches a moment where you are confronted with the difference between the film you thought you were making and the film that is being captured, our crossroads arrived in year two. We had set out to tell the story of Bristol Bay and discovered we were also telling the story of mining itself, what the industry promises, what it delivers, and the impossible space it occupies between global demand and the communities living downstream of it. Fusing those two films into one was the work of the next three years.

After meeting Christina and AlexAnna Salmon, I knew that I had met the heartbeat of the film and the center gravity for the story. For me, engaging in the story surrounding Pebble was a choice, for them, it was a necessity. Igiugig is the first village downstream of the proposed mine site and as the years of production stacked up, so did their progress in protecting what they cared about most, home.

In January 2023, the EPA invoked protections under Section 404(c) of the Clean Water Act, and Bristol Bay was protected. It was a victory for that fight, though not the end of the larger one. The mining industry will keep pushing, and vigilance is the price of every protection.

What changed for the film is that it no longer needed to argue for a fight. It became proof that they can be won.

UNEARTH is a reminder that standing up for what you believe in is not a sacrifice. It is the only way to accomplish what seems impossible. As Christina says in the film: "Once you mess it up, there's no getting it back." The best solution to any problem is the prevention of it in the first place. The job of this film, now, is to give people optimism and reason to roll their sleeves back up and get to work protecting what they love.

—— John Hunter Nolan, Director, UNEARTH