In Symbiosis

For 70 years, industrial agriculture has promised to feed a growing world through chemical fertilisers, pesticides and high-yield seeds. This award-winning documentary investigates the true cost of that promise – one now inseparable from the climate and biodiversity crises it has helped create. In a series of short subsections, we track the journey food takes to make it onto our tables, alongside the historical development of the system itself.

The story traces back to the postwar “Green Revolution,” when cheap synthetic fertilisers and new seed varieties were sold as the solution to world hunger, and shows how that promise curdled into a system now dependent on pesticides linked to chronic disease. Scientists, farmers and campaigners, including activist Vandana Shiva and ecologist Dave Goulson, lay out the evidence, while whistleblowers recall being silenced for questioning the safety of GMOs and the next generation of unregulated, unlabelled gene-edited crops now entering our food supply.

Reaching back further still, to the colonial plantations that first turned food into a commodity for empire, we see how that same logic now drives land grabs in the Global South, locking small farmers into debt and dependency on imported seed and chemicals.

Yet this is equally a search for regenerative alternatives. On agroecological and biodynamic farms in England and Uganda, as well as among the shepherds of Sardinia’s “Blue Zone” – home to some of the world’s longest-lived people – a different model emerges: one built on the symbiosis between soil, plant, animal and microbiome, offering a roadmap to restoring food security and environmental resilience.

“Few documentaries dare to take on a series of interrelated subjects and pull all the threads together to make a cohesive whole. In Symbiosis is one of those. It is quite simply a film that should be seen by everyone who cares about life, living and the planet we inhabit.” – Neil Norman, Film Critic

“In Symbiosis offers a rare and compelling vision of the challenges facing our societies. More than a warning, the film invites audiences to rethink humanity’s relationship with nature and to imagine pathways toward regeneration and coexistence. Insightful, accessible, and profoundly relevant, In Symbiosis is not just a documentary, it is an educational tool for the future. At a time when many films document the damage, In Symbiosis dares to ask why. In doing so, it offers something far more valuable than despair: understanding and the possibility of change.” – Cédric Eloy, Director of Cambodia International Film Festival

“One of the best documentaries on the subject: In Symbiosis has everything I hope for in an environmental documentary: thorough research, clear storytelling and the courage to expose what is wrong with our agricultural and food system. It examines the power of the major players and makes a compelling case about the dangers current practices pose to our health and the planet. What impressed me most was how the filmmakers connect so many complex issues without losing the thread. The film asks difficult questions about who benefits from the food system and who bears its costs, while showing possibilities for change. It left me informed, challenged and convinced of the importance of the subject. – Wolfgang Knöpfler, Oscar shortlisted and Sundance Audience Award winning Producer.” – Wolfgang Knöpfler, Oscar shortlisted and Sundance Audience Award winning Producer.