Darwin's Nightmare

This savagely frightful documentary depicts in clear view the horrendous underside of globalization. Just nominated for a 2006 Oscar as best documentary feature! Praised by the New York Times as a "harrowing, indispensable documentary," Darwin's Nightmare focuses on the Nile perch—an alien fish species introduced into Tanzania's Lake Victoria solely for purpose of export to Europe and Russia. Since then, the fish has destroyed the lake's ecosystem, leaving local Tanzanians to survive on bones and rotting carcasses. The Nile perch itself comes to exemplify globalism's winner-take-all attitude, and as the Austrian-born, Paris-based director has remarked, "I could make the same kind of movie in Sierra Leone, only the fish would be diamonds, in Honduras, bananas, and in Libya, Nigeria or Angola, crude oil." (107 mins.)