By Aylin Aarhus
The School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures screened “Illusions of Control,” a 2019 documentary that explores themes of motherhood, climate change and pollution.
The film was shown Sept. 18 in Juan Ramón Jiménez Hall. SLLC held a follow-up Q&A on Wednesday with director Shannon Walsh.
The screening and Q&A were part of the launch of the new SLLC Bachelor of Arts program, Global Culture and Thought.
The 86-minute documentary follows the lives of five women around the world dealing with major crises, from pollution to terminal cancer.
One of the stories featured was from Yellowknife, Canada, where a gold mining operation left hundreds of thousands of tons of arsenic underground.
Stacey Sundberg, a member of the Yellowknives Dene First Nation, worries about the harm arsenic exposure through contaminated food and water does to her tribe.
Near the end of the documentary, Sundberg reveals she moved away from Yellowknife, fearing that arsenic exposure could affect her pregnancy.
“Guess who’s gonna be left here when that arsenic comes out of the ground and contaminates all this land?” Sundberg said. “I hope you think about the future of how our kids are gonna survive.”
Jacob Carle, a sophomore international relations and economics major, said Sundberg’s story stuck out to him the most.
“A very big thing that is happening in our society right now, and that has been happening for the past century… is these big corporate companies ruining both the environment and the lives of people who live in specific locations,” Carle said.
The documentary also follows Silvia Ortiz, an activist from Northern Mexico. Ortiz’s daughter, Fanny, was kidnapped in 2004 and has not been found.
Ortiz and her husband founded Grupo Vida, an outreach group for loved ones of victims of kidnapping. The group travels to the desert to search for human remains, which they send to a lab for identification, hoping to give victims’ families closure.
Ortiz says she believes her daughter is dead, but still hopes to find her.
“Dead or alive, I have to be with her,” Ortiz said through a translator.
Aj Kitzinger, a senior Arabic major, appreciated that the documentary raised awareness about missing and murdered women in Latin America.
“Femicide in Mexico is a huge problem that a lot of people don’t know about,” Kitzinger said. “It takes a lot of grit to figure out how to change, and change for the better, when it doesn’t seem like things are moving in that direction.”
During the Q&A, Walsh discussed the difficulty of documenting crises without being able to fix them.
“None of us can change the world alone, but together, we can have a lot of impact,” Walsh said. “I’m just one person with one voice. But through using my voice, it can amplify yours.”
Featured Image: The exterior of Juan Ramón Jiménez Hall. Photo credit: Miller Rogers-Tetrick.