Author: Dawai Uriona

On January 4, 2018, our small team arrived at the small airport on Tarawa. After three days of travel, we were finally there.

When the plane was still in the air, we had flattened our noses against the windows. In the midst of the azure blue vastness of the Pacific Ocean, which we had flown over for hours from Fiji, there was suddenly some pieces of land deep down there. Circular the shape, the tiny atolls arranged themselves on the caldera of an ancient volcano. Hard to imagine that there should be space enough for the landing of the jet. But there was space and we landed noisily. The thickest heat shot through the open hatches. After we had crossed the runway on foot and finally came to the customs office, the young officers began to use their mobiles frantically. From the office of the President they received the information: “Send them all back to Fiji.” What happened?

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The Kiribati Project is our most comprehensive participatory film project so far. We are launching our third feature film project together with the people of the islands of the Republic of Kiribati. Due to the melting of the poles and the rise of the sea level, the groundwater stocks of numerous atolls are over-silting, the sea is beating faster than ever before over the islands and threatens to engulf them still in this century.

Our pitching video (last post under this one)  tells you about our motives to make this movie.

Again, there is no script, no fixed statement to filch, but instead, the search for the stories that we will explore together with local people in a variety of workshops.

On the island of Tarawa we will start work in January 2018. The area of ​the Islands of the republic is huge. The islands spread across the vast Pacific Ocean on an area just about the size of the U.S.A. We will try to visit as many islands as possible and invite as many people as possible into the project.

In the course of the year 2018 you can follow the progress of the work on our project blog mauri-kiribati.com.

We are happy to have found a political patron for our project with the member of parliament, Michael Leutert, who has supported us intensively since the planning phase, encouraged us, pointed out possible funding and became a fan of this film project.

And we succeeded, to win Professor Dr. Mojib Latif for the scientific advice for the film, who gave us valuable advice already for the shooting at a first meeting in Hamburg.

We thank Maria Kling of the production “Studio Kalliope“, who believed in this project from the beginning and feared no difficulties and obstacles to get it going.

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