(Bloomberg) -- Eight months into her pregnancy in 2016, 17-year-old Antônia Jardênia da Silva visited her doctor to ask the sex of her baby. She left his office having learned two things: She was carrying a girl, and da Silva had Zika.
The year before, a heat wave had hit da Silva’s hometown in the Brazilian countryside, causing a severe drought. The government provided large mobile tanks of water as an emergency response. Over the next year, these tanks became a breeding ground for Zika-virus mosquitoes, which then infected da Silva.
The disease forced da Silva to leave her father’s farm and move alone to Fortaleza, Brazil’s fourth largest city. There, she attended medical clinics specializing in microcephaly — a condition caused by Zika that stunts infants’ brain development and head growth.
Her baby Victoria was born with microcephaly one month later. Da Silva narrates her story in “Finding Home,” a six-minute animated documentary.
Directed by Maria Stanisheva, “Finding Home” is the pilot of an eponymous documentary series. Each episode tells an individual climate refugee story. The pilot episode took first prize at the Bloomberg Green Docs competition, announced Friday at the Bloomberg Green Festival in Seattle. (You can read more about the finalists here.)
Throughout her career, Stanisheva has used animation to address human rights issues. Her campaign “Together to End Male Guardianship,” sponsored by Human Rights Watch in 2016, drew over 10 million viewers.
Stanisheva sees climate migration as the defining crisis of the future. The United Nations Refugee Agency says climate change has caused an average of 23 million displacements per year over the past decade. The Institute for Economics and Peace estimates over one billion people will be vulnerable to ecological catastrophe by 2050.
For Stanisheva, animation offers a distinctive vantage point for telling these stories. “It helps people feel protected when watching a difficult subject. Even if it’s rough and painful, people can bear with it more and connect emotionally.”
The series tracks individuals from across the world. The second episode, now in production, will tell the story of St. Maarten’s Minister of Justice, Lyndon Lewis. In 2017, a hurricane forced Lewis to flee his home on the Caribbean island for La Rochelle, France.
Stanisheva aims to center the third episode around a family from the South Pacific island-nation of Tuvalu. A climate-driven water contamination forced the family to migrate to New Zealand.
“Finding Home” is touring film festivals at a time of fraught debate over the representation of climate refugees. Climate migration narratives can be used to spur anti-immigrant sentiment.
Kaitlin Raimi, an associate professor at the University of Michigan, researches the reception of climate migration narratives. On a large scale, Raimi says, these narratives do not change people’s views of global warming or compel them to support stronger climate policy.
On a personal level, however, these stories could make people feel more connected to climate refugees. “The research is a little mixed, but it mostly suggests personal narratives are better for making audiences feel connected,” she said. “It can increase feelings of warmth towards those who are displaced.”
During the making of the film, da Silva’s baby died. She still lives in one of Fortaleza’s favelas, nearly 200 miles from her family.
Stanisheva sees her films as a way to educate viewers. “It’s a way to change people’s hearts,” she said.
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.
