''The Salt of the Earth'' (also released under the French title ''Le sel de la terre'') is a 2014 internationally co-produced

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documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...

directed by Wim Wenders and

Juliano Ribeiro Salgado Juliano Ribeiro Salgado (born in 1974) is a Brazilian filmmaker, director, and writer. Personal life He is the son of photographer Sebastião Salgado and architect Lélia Wanick Salgado, who have been married since 1967. His brother Rodrigo, w ...

. It portrays the works of Salgado's father, the Brazilian photographer

Sebastião Salgado Sebastião Ribeiro Salgado Júnior (born February 8, 1944) is a Brazilian social documentary photographer and photojournalist. He has traveled in over 120 countries for his photographic projects. Most of these have appeared in numerous press pu ...

. The film was selected to compete in the

Un Certain Regard (, meaning 'a certain glance') is a section of the Cannes Film Festival's official selection. It is run at the Debussy, parallel to the competition for the . This section was introduced in 1978 by Gilles Jacob. The section presents 20 films w ...

section at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival where it won the Special Prize. The film was nominated for the

Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature An academy ( Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary or tertiary higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosoph ...

at the

87th Academy Awards The 87th Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored the best films of 2014 and took place on February 22, 2015, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles beginning at 5:30 ...

. It won the 2014 Audience Award at the

San Sebastián International Film Festival The San Sebastián International Film Festival ( SSIFF; es, Festival Internacional de San Sebastián, eu, Donostia Zinemaldia) is an annual FIAPF A category film festival held in the Spanish city of Donostia-San Sebastián in September, in ...

and the 2015 Audience Award at the

Tromsø International Film Festival The Tromsø International Film Festival (TIFF) is an annual film festival held during the third week of January in Tromsø, Norway. The inaugural Tromsø International Film Festival was held in 1991. TIFF has 5 screening venues, including one ...

. It also won the César Award for Best Documentary Film at the 40th César Awards.

Overview

Salgado's photographs and videos featured in the film explored natural environments and the humans who inhabit them. His black and white photographs illuminated how the environment and humans are exploited to maximize profit for the global economic market. Co-directed by Salgado's son, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, the film also contains recollections from his childhood of a father who was absent much of the time and the times he accompanied his father on trips to discover who Salgado was beyond his childhood conception. The film follows 40 years of Salgado's work from South America, to Africa, Europe, the Arctic, and back home to Brazil focusing on international conflicts, starvation and exodus, and natural landscapes in decline.

Synopsis

Salgado begins a career as an economist with his wife, Lélia, by his side. During a stint in Paris, Lélia buys a camera, and Salgado discovers his love of photography. He uses his own photos and videos to illustrate his life and work beginning with his exile from Brazil and his subsequent transition from economist to artist and explorer. Salgado begins working full-time as a photographer in 1973, first news photography then documentary-style, with Lelia supporting him. Salgado travels around South America, including the countries neighboring his native Brazil, where he spends time among and photographs native tribes like the Zo'é, who lived lives not much touched by the modern world. Next, Salgado travels to the Sahel region of Africa, shown in unflinching and heartbreaking video and photographs. Salgado refers to the famine in Ethiopia as a problem of distribution, not just a natural disaster. He documents the largest ever

refugee camps A refugee camp is a temporary settlement built to receive refugees and people in refugee-like situations. Refugee camps usually accommodate displaced people who have fled their home country, but camps are also made for internally displaced peop ...

and the innumerable deaths that occurred there, from hunger, cholera, and cold. His work covering famine in Africa brings worldwide attention to the region and the underlying causes. After photographing the Yugoslavian war and Rwanda right after the genocide to one year later, Salgado loses hope for humanity. Going back to his natal

Minas Gerais Minas Gerais () is a state in Southeastern Brazil. It ranks as the second most populous, the third by gross domestic product (GDP), and the fourth largest by area in the country. The state's capital and largest city, Belo Horizonte (literally ...

, he founds Instituto Terra and re-forests his family land. Then he is inspired to photograph the wildlife.

Reception

''The Salt of the Earth'' received largely positive reviews from critics. According to the

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website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, 95% of critics have given the film a positive review with an average rating of 8.00/10, based on 94 reviews. The site's critics consensus states: "While the work it honors may pose thorny ethical questions that ''Salt of the Earth'' neglects to answer, it remains a shattering, thought-provoking testament to Sebastião Salgado's career." At

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, the film has a weighted average score of 83 out of 100 based on 29 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

References

External links

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Salt Of The Earth 2014 films 2010s biographical films 2014 documentary films French biographical films French documentary films Brazilian biographical films Brazilian documentary films Italian biographical films Italian documentary films 2010s French-language films 2010s Italian-language films 2010s Portuguese-language films Biographical documentary films Films directed by Wim Wenders Films shot in Brazil Films shot in Indonesia Films shot in Russia Films scored by Laurent Petitgand 2010s English-language films 2010s French films 2014 multilingual films French multilingual films Brazilian multilingual films Italian multilingual films