Wild Relatives

Brought up in Jerusalem, educated in Norway and living partly in Lebanon, filmmaker-artist Jumana Manna was predisposed to document an event that has sparked media interest worldwide: in 2012, the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), forced to relocate from Aleppo to Lebanon due to the war in Syria, successfully duplicated a seed bank stored on a Norwegian island, in order to reconstitute its collection. Fully in the present and with no didactic device, Wild Relatives very fluidly captures the articulation between this large-scale international initiative and its local implementation in the Bekaa plain. With a soundtrack incorporating the upbeat pomp of the Center’s inauguration and the daily life of young migrant women working in the fields, the filmmaker does not limit herself to a critical viewpoint. The subtle editing creates a relationship between all the participants of this vast initiative, be it the trucker in charge of transporting the seeds or the woman engineer in her laboratory who mentions the search for a “pure” seed. Rich Lebanese landowners, the Syrian farmer who settled in Lebanon and decided to open a “seed house” for local use, a Norwegian pastor visiting Longyearbyen island – each of them is filmed interacting with nature, even, and above all, if they are exiles in this landscape. But the “wild relatives” of the title, also include the State and the individual, and tensions emerge in these transactions: can one party regulate the other party’s relationship with nature, even if it is for the latter’s own good? (Charlotte Garson)