‘Farmers are paying the highest price.’ Documentary ‘Common Ground’ to show in La Grange

When was the last time you saw an award-winning environmental documentary in a movie theater?

One that left you with hopeful solutions instead of paralyzed by fear about the climate crisis and the perilous state of the planet?

As atypical as it is to have a documentary in a corporate movie theater like AMC, it was pretty seamless for the Middle Chattahoochee (MC) Sierra Club Co-Chair Cathy Knight to get AMC to screen “Common Ground” in La Grange.

Knight and the leaders of the MC Sierra Club were tipped by a local about the movie and advocated for a screening. Knight took on the ask once the leadership team heard it was all about a solution to climate change and regenerative agriculture.

“We felt like the message of regenerative farming is in alignment with what Sierra Club values,” Knight said.

The movie, “Common Ground”, is an invitation to an environmental movement centered around how farmers can and should switch from conventional farming to regenerative farming because soil health and human health depend on it.

At the same time, the methodology suggests it can draw down millions of tons of carbon, “solving climate change by converting 100 million acres to regenerative agriculture”.

Movie directors and producers Rebecca and Joshua Tickell’s first soil-health documentary, “Kiss the Ground”, narrated by Woody Harrelson, hit Netflix in 2020.

“Kiss the Ground touches on the carbon cycle and introduces the idea of regeneration and its role in the climate crisis,” Rebecca Tickell said. “Common Ground pulls back the curtain on what holds farmers back from transitioning into regeneration and how farmers are paying the highest price from [from the current system].”

This time, directors took a different approach, using movie screenings instead of movie streaming. The filming couple has made 20 films in 17 years. Tickell called the documentary duo, “scrappy, outcasts of Hollywood.”

“We couldn’t just hit the free button,” she said. “This has been completely community driven, with over 12,000 requests for the film,” Tickell said. “I think when people get wind of how big of a movement this is, it turns peoples hearts and minds and brains on,” Tickell said.

Screening in Columbus next?

Getting it in the theater was fairly simple for Knight. She called AMC in La Grange on 201 Main Street and a week later she got a call back from the manager saying corporate approved it and it would be showing from February 16 to February 22.

“AMC should get the credit for bringing the movie, all I did was ask,” Knight said. “They are doing all of the leg work. I was very pleased with how open the AMC manager was to this”

Knight and the Sierra Club were willing to rent the theater. She assumed the easy okay was because the film is showing at other theaters.

“AMC has been super supportive,” Tickell said. “Always good to us.”

There will be three to four shows a day starting this Friday the 16th. Knight and others at the Sierra Club are planning on attending the Saturday matinee for $7, “a reasonable amount”, Knight said.

Laura Turner Seydel, Atlanta-based environmental activist and associate producer of the film, said there was a two-week showing in Atlanta in December.

“Our goal is to bring the movie to theaters all around Georgia,” Turner-Seydel said. “We are very happy to be able to screen the film in La Grange.”

Knight is hopeful for a good turnout and has posted flyers in La Grange, on Facebook posts, and sent emails to the MC Sierra Club member database. She will continue to ask AMC theaters in other cities to screen the movie.

“I may continue to ask theaters in Fayetville and Newnan,”she said. “We want it to come down to Columbus. We need the college student demographic to see this.”

A-listers, Indigenous historians and whistleblowers

Knight hasn’t seen the film and hopes it lives up to its hype from the slew of awards.

Some of the film laurels include: winner of the Tribeca Festival Human/Nature Award, Environmental Movie Award for Best Documentary, and Golden Lion International Film Festival Best Documentary.

Tickell called the movie a “love letter to future generations, plus a love letter from the narrators.”

The a-list narrators, Laura Dern, Rosario Dawson, Jason Momoa, Woody Harrelson, Ian Somerhalder, and Donald Glover are all featured in the film.

The filmmakers intertwine Indigenous foodways and history, highlighting their cultural knowledge that preceded the “conventional” practices of tilling the soil, and industrializing the food system, featuring Indigenous Cultural Historians.

The film discusses how the anti-regenerative movement is intertwined with racism in the South. It also highlights why fossil-fuel based chemicals were introduced in agriculture and how they kill the soil, and how both chemicals and conventional farming don’t allow for the soil to sequester carbon, and help the climate crisis.

There are even whistleblowers who spoke out against a system and are now castaways from government-funded agriculture jobs.

“The film screens are like church revivals,” Tickell said.

Viewers will walk away with a solution.

“The goal is to regenerate 100-million acres of land,” Tickell said. “There were about three million acres that used regenerative agriculture practices pre-Kiss the Ground, to now 33 million acres.”

The movement is blossoming, and now the Tickells are working on their next project, “Groundswell”–which will take a look at global regeneration outside of the US.

“It’s going to be the opposite of “Don’t Look Up”, Rebecca said.

Here is a link to request the showing in your theater: https://commongroundfilm.org/request-common-ground-at-your-local-theater/