‘Sun Come Up’ documents climate refugees

Since debuting at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival last spring and earning a nomination for Best Documentary Short at this year’s Oscars, Jennifer Redfearn’s Sun Come Up (2010) has been finding audiences around the country at film festivals and campus screenings.   This month, for example, the film will play at the University of Oregon as part of the 16th annual Grassroots Environmental Justice Conference.

Sun Come Up focuses on the people who live on Papua New Guinea’s Carteret Islands, where the connection between land and sea is spiritual, cultural, and ecological.  The Carteret Islands are one of a growing list of island nations that are falling victim to rising sea levels caused by climate change, and the islanders are all too aware of it. They will have no choice but to move to higher ground, and their options are grim as they search for a home in war-torn Bougainville, an autonomous region of Papua New Guinea. And when that happens, “we will not be the Carteret people anymore,” an islander sadly concludes.

Sun Come Up from Jennifer Redfearn on Vimeo.