Submission

Submission or in Swedish: Underkastelsen is a new film by Stefan Jarl, the Swedish socially engaged director, who - according to Ingmar Bergman - "fights for ideals and convictions".

This film will premiere any day now and it's another example of a film about the environmental and health problems we cause ourselves by using and being exposed to hundreds of thousands of chemicals every day.

Jarl takes as his starting point the development after the Second World War, when the use of chemicals - to some parts as a result of the use of chemicals in war - became extremely common.
Today - and for years - we are surrounded by some 100 000 chemicals going through our bodies and causing health problems of different kinds.
This is well known and has been discussed earlier but maybe the era we now live in will make us more susceptible to this message?
Why?
Well for some years now - as during the 1960's and 70's - questions concerning environmental and health issues has been on the agenda constantly, not only through different international research programs and conferences but through films and documentaries made in order to highlight these questions.

Al Gore is one of many influential opinion-makers but this work is carried out everywhere in the world by people far from the spotlights but at least as engaged in this issue as Gore or even more (an unintentional rhyme).
I have myself seen a great number of films concerning environmental issues - An Inconvenient Truth is one, Bullshit another, to mention two very different films - but I can't mention them all here but through this link to grinningplanet you can find some films in different categories.
Another site is this one: Mother Nature Network.

I recommend you to see this film as the œuvres by Jarl often are very engaging and carried by a great pathos.
In this film he also interviews scientists and politicians and he undergoes blood tests to see how many chemicals he is carrying in his body and so does a Swedish actress who is expecting a baby.
What they found? I don't know but it wasn't particularly encouraging, I guess.
I haven't seen this film myself and I don't know when I will be able to see it in France but if it's released in 'a cinema near me', I will of course try to make it there.