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CURRENT SEA – An Environmental Thriller Documentary Exploring the Illegal Fishing Trade in Cambodia

Photo Courtesy of Speak Thunder Films – Check out the Kickstarter Campaign here

 

An environmental thriller documentary exploring the illegal fishing trade in Cambodia and those who risk it all to intervene.

Christopher Smith is a documentary, commercial, and music video director. His first feature documentary, TINY: A Story About Living Small, premiered at SXSW in 2013 and has screened at more than 40 film festivals around the world.

Over the past year we have been working on an exciting documentary that explores the illegal fishing trade in Cambodia. 

Stephanie Lincoln, Producer Stephanie Lincoln is a producer/attorney who served as episode producer on The Race Card, a documentary series hosted by Charles Barkley for TNT, produced by Doc Shop Productions set to release in June 2017. Prior to that, she worked with Susan Lacy, the creator and executive producer of American Masters, and Jessica Levin on two biographical documentaries produced for HBO.

Current Sea, is a heart-stopping verité style documentary that follows the stories of Matt Blomberg, a journalist who is investigating the unsustainable harvesting of ocean wildlife and the corruption that enables the black market to thrive, and Paul Ferber, an environmental activist who routinely puts himself in harm’s way as he patrols a small part of the ocean. The film also follows two Khmer university students who are some of the first of their generation to pursue careers in marine ecology.  

Over the past year, we’ve been documenting their stories as well as the devastating impacts of illegal, unregulated, and unreported (IUU) fishing on the people and marine ecosystems of Cambodia.

Photo Courtesy of Speak Thunder Films – Check out the Kickstarter Campaign here

But now we need your support to finish our investigations and get this film out to the world where it can make a difference. 

Photo Courtesy of Speak Thunder Films

Cambodia struggles with many environmental challenges. One such challenge is the illegal harvesting of marine wildlife, often times through destructive methods such as trawling. 

Photo Courtesy of Speak Thunder Films – Check out the Kickstarter Campaign here

Trawling is a type of fishing where heavy nets are dragged along the sea floor, scooping up fish and other creatures indiscriminately. The heavy nets scar the floor, destroying sea grasses, corals, and other delicate ecosystems. The damage from these nets lasts a long time, and their use jeopardizes other forms of small-scale and subsistence fishing.

Sea grasses, a primary habitat for seahorses, grow well in Cambodia’s shallow water. Seahorses are extremely important to its ecosystem and are a good indication of the health of the ocean – similar to a ‘canary in the coal mine’. However, the heavy trawling kills the seahorses and destroys their habitat. Despite it being illegal, seahorses are also hunted so that they can be infused in rice wine and sold as a cure for male impotence…(read more here via the Kickstarter page).

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Available June 8th, 2017

Lazar works as a ‘decoy’ or ‘bait’ who distracts the police and oversees the transfer of illegal immigrants across the border with the EU. Intelligent and discreet, he lives under the patronage of a local mobster and is able to support his family with the money he makes from trafficking. He falls in love with a young student, a stranger to his world, and contemplates changing his life. One night, his brother Toni is responsible for the drowning of one of the immigrants. Lazar is called to help and is faced with an impossible decision.

 

Available June 1st, 2017

The Cyclotron is a thriller that takes place at the end of the Second World War. Simone, a spy working for the Allies, is entrusted with the mission to find and execute Emil, a scrupulous Berlin scientist who discovered before the Americans the way to build an atomic bomb, and is fleeing with his secret. Simone finds him on a night train speeding towards Switzerland. German soldiers, led by König, a German scientist, who want to arrest Emil and make him talk before he leaves the country, are also chasing him. Things get complicated when memories of love and quantum mechanics get intertwined in the pursuit.

 

Available June 15, 2017

BNB Hell tells the story of a young woman’s hunt for her missing sister ends at a rundown bed and breakfast in the Hollywood Hills run by an ill-tempered woman called Mommy. Disturbing messages left by former guests suggest unsettling secrets lay buried there.

 

 

 

Watch the film on iTunes or Amazon

Show Business is an American comedy that follows screenwriter Guy Franklin as he moves from NYC to LA with his fiancé. It should be a great gig but Guy soon realizes that being in Show Business and balancing his life love is easier said than done – a movie by Composer/Filmmaker Alexander Tovar

 

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