As a Nation Slips Away

In Review: Anote’s Ark
Directed by Matthieu Rytz

Swiss-born photographer Matthieu Rytz’s Anote’s Ark is an impressive directorial debut about the equatorial Republic of Kiribati (formerly part of a British colony called the Gilbert and Ellice Islands). Rytz, who has written, directed, produced, and filmed the production, immediately establishes the Pacific Island’s essence with exquisite cinematography of flat palm-fringed atolls and an outrigger canoe atop a turquoise lagoon — an appropriate opening visual given that Kiribati’s 310 square miles of land straddles 1.3 million square miles of ocean. The aerial camerawork reveals what’s at the heart of both this watery realm’s current crisis and this documentary: What do you do when your island-nation is about to be swallowed by the rising sea?

Previously, Kiribati was best known for the bloody battle fought at Tarawa in 1943 as part of the Allied Forces’ island-hopping campaign in the Pacific theater against imperial Japan during WWII. But today, as Anote’s Ark starkly depicts, the low-lying island nation is at the frontlines in an arguably deadlier war: sea level rise caused by climate change.

Rytz chronicles the struggles of President Anote Tong, as he embarks upon a race against time to save his people and 4,000 years of Kiribati culture, as well as those of a traditional I-Kiribati young couple, Tiemeri (aka Sermary) Tiare and Ato Raatati Garstang, as they confront the prospect of having to relocate from the only home they have ever known.

Set against the backdrop of international climate negotiations, the film shows Tong traveling to the Arctic to witness ice melt, to Rome to visit the Vatican, and to climate summits to plead Kiribati’s case. He’s shown speaking with Pope Francis, President Obama, and other world leaders. Video clips of storms and flooding in Kiribati, which previously enjoyed a mostly hurricane-free existence due to its location on the equator, undergird Tong’s sheer desperation.

Stressing “our human right to survive,” the 67-year-old Tong ponders, “What is to become of my grandchildren?” Fearing it’s “too late to reduce fossil fuels” enough to save Kiribati from going underwater, Tong eloquently agitates on the world stage for international assistance. During his presidency, Tong, who served three terms from 2003 to 2016, considers a range of dramatic solutions, including purchasing land in Fiji’s high islands as a “safe haven” for his people, who might be forced to leave home. He also considers acquiring land in Australia and New Zealand, but anxiously ruminates that removing Indigenous islanders from their homelands in Kiribati could lead to the “extinction” of their cultures.

Indeed, Tiare — alarmed over Kiribati’s rising waters — decides to migrate to New Zealand after her home floods and she wins a visa lottery to the country in 2015. Like many other immigrants, she becomes her family’s trailblazer, relocating first so that she can earn enough money as an agricultural worker to afford airfare for her husband and their six children. Within two years, she moves her family over, and the young couple has another baby, whom they call “a Kiwi, a New Zealander.”

Like most small island states, Kiribati’s population is small, consisting of only about 110,000 people. So what can Micronesians, Polynesians, and Melanesians really do to resist the big powers’ energy policies? They’re not entirely sure. At one point Anote laments that while “war” is being waged against islanders, “We don’t have the means to counter.”

However, some activists point out that isles like Guam, the Marshalls, and Tahiti do have major military installations, which islanders could mobilize against with strikes, “sail-ins,” and other civil disobedience actions, to force climate concessions from imperialist nations.

Sadly, the documentary ends with a postscript noting that after Anote stepped down the opposition party undid many of his climate-oriented policies because the new government apparently doesn’t really believe that people of Kiribati will have to move away from the islands.

One hopes the global community will eventually come together to help this island nation before it is too late. We need to heed the alarm sounded by Kiribati’s former leader: “What is going to happen to us is going to be the fate of the rest [of the world].”