Triumph, Tragedy And Climate Change: ‘The Island President’
Photo by Chiara Goia
by Eban Goodstein, reposted from Grist
A cross between paradise and paradise. This is how Mohammed Nasheed of the Maldives describes his nation in Jon Shenks powerful new film,TheIsland President.
Shenk follows President Nasheed over a one-year period, leading up to the Copenhagen climate summit, in a beautiful, courageous, and strangelyhopeful story. The film resonates all the more deeply following last months coup in the Maldives. The storys ending perhaps tragic, perhaps apowerful continuation istodayunfolding in real time.
The Maldives is a string of 2,000 islands off the coast of India, home to about 300,000 people. The highest point in the country is only a few feet abovesea level. Until 2008, the islands had been under dictatorial rule for decades.
