Crude

EXCLUSIVE FIRST RUN!  ► A mix of gripping legal thriller and heartbreaking human-rights drama, Crude, the new documentary from Joe Berlinger, director of Brother’s Keeper and Metallica: Some King of Monster, has already been dubbed “the film Chevron does not want you to see.” The film chronicles the high-stakes, David v. Goliath struggle (perhaps that should be Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, after the interminable lawsuit in Dickens’s Bleak House) between indigenous communities of Cofán Indians in the Ecuadorian jungle and one of the world’s giant oil companies. The issue is a monumental environmental disaster — massive lakes of toxic sludge, accompanied by skyrocketing rates of cancer and birth defects — wrought by decades of oil production. The catastrophe has been called the “Amazon Chernobyl” and led to a $27 billion class-action lawsuit. The matter is much complicated by the passage of time, corporate succession, disputed science, the dodgy environmental record of the Ecuadorian state oil company now operating in the area, the involvement of slick American attorneys hoping for a huge contingency fee if the suit is successful — and Chevron’s strategy to simply prolong, and prolong, the case. The cast of colourful personalities includes Pablo Fajardo, a young Ecuadorian lawyer championing the cause of the Cofán, and celebrity activist Trudie Styler, wife of pop star Sting, who enters the fray. “A remarkable documentary . . . A stranger-than-fiction, serpentine narrative that is still unfolding” (Scott Foundas, Village Voice). Colour, 35mm, in English, Spanish, A’ingae and Secoya with English subtitles. 105 mins.