Finding Home

Each episode of the Finding Home series features the recorded testimony of an actual environmental refugee uprooted from their home and forced to relocate to strange new lands. It showcases the various climate scenarios that force people to flee: ocean level rise, drought, and extreme weather events. Our pilot episode tells the story of Antônia Jardênia da Silva, an 18-year old Brazilian farmer’s daughter. Her village Milhã was severely affected by the latest heatwave in Eastern Brazil which turned some parts of the country into deserts. Local people started receiving water in large mobile tanks, provided by the government which became the breeding ground for Zika-virus mosquitos that caused a health pandemic of Microcephaly. Jardenia was 17 years old and 8 months pregnant when she discovered she had Zika. She was forced to move to the favelas of the big city of Fortaleza because of the disease and took the difficult decision to take care of her daughter Victoria all by herself.

Director’s statement
From American wildfires to Pacific islands disappearing due to ocean-level rise, we are witnessing the devastating effects of climate change every day. Climate refugees have been forecasted between 200 million and 1 billion people by 2050. Finding Home aims to give a public voice to individual refugees from different social and geographical backgrounds and uses animation to retell their experiences. The project highlights the concrete impact of various climate issues on the global population which makes it a powerful communication tool to reach a large audience and raise awareness for action.

Finding Home will feature testimonies from 12 different protagonists from all over the world in diverse languages. Some of them will have a clear vision on climate justice and take concrete action to achieve that, while others will only be represented as a piece of the global jigsaw puzzle of human destinies being dramatically shaped by the life-shattering effects of climate change.