UNFRACTURED

A triumphant documentary about fighting with your whole heart, UNFRACTURED follows introspective biologist and mother Sandra Steingraber as she reinvents herself as an outspoken activist and throws herself into an environmental war that many believe is unwinnable. Hailed as a “toxic avenger” by Rolling Stone, Sandra quickly emerges as one of the leaders of New York’s biggest grassroots movement. Determined to win an uncompromising battle with the oil and gas industry, Sandra decides she must fight with her whole heart—devoting all her time, energy, and money to the cause.

But as the film opens, Sandra’s personal life is thrown into crisis when her husband suffers one stroke after another. Although she knows her family needs her at home, Sandra won’t stop—not until she and her allies win a statewide ban on fracking.

And they did win! On December 17, 2014, New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo declared a perma- nent, statewide ban on fracking.

The scientific evidence compiled by Sandra and her colleagues overwhelmingly shows that fracking (a natural gas extraction process the drills horizontally through the Earth and shatters the bedrock) contaminates water, destabilizes the climate, and imperils public health. Working as a researcher in communities around the world for the past 35 years, she has deployed the tools of science in the service of public health. But when fracking threatened to transform her own rural community in upstate New York into a factory floor for the gas industry, she knew she needed to do more than research the problem. She needed to stop it. As she saw it, the lives of her own children depended on winning a ban. And winning depended on good science and powerful social activism working hand in hand.

Shot over the last year of the historic fight against fracking in New York, UNFRACTURED offers an intimate perspective on an epic battle. We watch as Sandra debates the gas industry, delivers fiery rally speeches, and marches alongside other protestors. When Sandra visits anti-fracking activists in Romania, who have inspired her from afar, she is trailed by unmarked cars and pepper-sprayed by police. Back at home and motivated by her experiences abroad, Sandra joins with her neighbours to lead a civil disobedience campaign, is arrested for blockading a gas storage site, and is hauled away to jail.

As we go deeper into Sandra’s world, we see the chaos her activism has created in her personal life. Sandra worries that she is neglecting her children and abandoning her husband. But does not desist. Instead, Sandra redoubles her efforts, uses her personal struggles as a rallying cry, and contemplates how to be a good mother from inside a jail cell.

Unlike other films on the issue, UNFRACTURED is not a polemic on the harms of fracking. Instead, this hopeful cinéma-vérité documentary is an intimate look at one activist’s convictions and sacrific- es. It is also a rarity amongst environmental films: it ends triumphantly. Ultimately, UNFRACTURED takes us through a battle of astonishing international significance and into the life and mind of a com- plicated and compelling woman, asking us to consider the deep risks and rewards of activism.

www.unfractured.com