Kiribati: Words From a Last Generation (2017)
★★★ — Kiribati: Words From a Last Generation (2017)
Kiribati is not a country that tends to feature on many people's radar. A remote Pacific island nation scattered across 33 atolls and reef islands, it sits roughly halfway between Hawaii and Australia, and its total land area barely exceeds 800 square kilometres. What makes Kiribati particularly remarkable, and particularly fragile, is its elevation: the islands sit on average no more than two metres above sea level, making the nation one of the most acutely threatened places on earth as global sea levels continue to rise. Scientists and climate researchers have long pointed to Kiribati as a kind of canary in the coalmine, a place where the consequences of climate change are not distant projections but present, lived reality. The nation's government has, in recent years, been making contingency arrangements, including the purchase of land in Fiji, to account for the possibility of full-scale relocation of its roughly 120,000 citizens. It is an extraordinary and sobering situation, and one that receives very little coverage in Western media.
Into that gap steps Kiribati: Words From a Last Generation, a short documentary from 2017 co-directed by Aurora Brachman and Bradley King. Running to just 25 minutes, it is a modest and unadorned piece of filmmaking, focused entirely on giving voice to a small group of young I-Kiribati people as they speak about what it means to grow up knowing that their home may not exist for future generations. No studio backing is listed, and the film appears to have been made with limited resources, which is itself worth noting: this is not a polished but unremarkable cable documentary with a presenter and a sweeping score. It is something quieter and more personal. Brachman and King are American filmmakers working in collaboration with the community they are documenting, and the film had its place on the festival circuit before finding a wider audience. For context on just how rare it is to see Kiribati represented on screen at all, it is worth mentioning that The Curse (2014) is also from Kiribati, which makes it another genuinely unusual entry in any world cinema survey. Short documentary filmmaking of this kind, rooted in a specific community and a specific crisis, sits in a tradition that includes films like Nom Tèw (2009), another documentary he has reviewed, and Ben Fogle and the Buried City (2023), another entry in the non-fiction strand of this blog, both of which share that interest in places and communities under pressure.
Because the cast here are not professional actors or public figures but ordinary young people from Kiribati, there are no screen credits to speak of in the traditional sense. What the film offers instead is a series of unmediated conversations, personal and unscripted, from people who are living the situation the film describes. That choice of approach, for better or worse, defines everything about the film's texture and its limitations.
A-Z World Movie Tour Kiribati What a Stark and shocking documentary. It's amazing to think that by 2050 (just 25 years from now) Kiribati could be completely uninhabitable. The whole island is only 2m above sea level so it's a huge risk at all times. I can't imagine living knowing you're going to be the last generation that live on your island. The documentary itself is pretty basic. It's just interviews with a small group of people and it only focuses on them repeating what the situation is now without discussing anything about possible solutions, the history, etc....
That tension between the weight of the subject and the plainness of the execution is something I keep coming back to. There is an argument that a story this significant almost demands more, that a fuller historical account, some engagement with the political dimension, or even a broader cross-section of voices might have given the film the shape to match its stakes. But there is also something honest about the restraint, about letting people speak without dressing it up. For me, the lasting impression is less about the film as a piece of craft and more about the sheer reality it points towards. Sometimes a documentary does not need to be a great film to leave you staring out the window for a while afterwards. This one does that.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 2017 | Watched: 2025-07-04
Related on Movies With Macca
More from Kiribati: The Curse (2014)
More from the 2010s: Wonder (2017) · Beautiful Boy (2018) · The Witch (2015) · What We Do in the Shadows (2014)
More documentary: Letter from Siberia (1957) · Lessons of Darkness (1992) · Style Wars (1983) · Here and Elsewhere (1976)
