The Wild

By the end of Mark Titus' debut feature documentary The Breach, the future looked bright for the salmon habitat in Alaska's pristine Bristol Bay. The film depicted how local opposition had seemingly thwarted the proposed Pebble Mine project, which would have placed North America's largest open-pit copper mine in the bay's headwaters. Fast-forward three years and the picture looks very different, with a mining-friendly administration in the White House and a new emphasis on rolling back environmental regulations. Titus felt compelled to follow up with The Wild, which focuses on the rapid erosion of hard-won safeguards that has revived efforts to build the Pebble Mine in the most pristine salmon habitat on the continent. Rather than focus solely on the fish themselves, Seattle local Titus emphasizes the impact on the community, which relies on healthy sockeye-salmon runs to make a living in Bristol Bay. They include the operator of the area's Bear Trail Lodge, a net-setter on the Nushagak River, the captain of a commercial fishing vessel, leaders of the Indigenous First Nations, and a family-owned fish-processing business. As The Wild demonstrates, the story of salmon is as much about a human way of life and the Northwest's cultural heritage as about protecting a vital food source. Inside of all this is Titus' own intensely personal story of recovery, which intersects squarely with the film's central question: How do you save what you love? In order to answer it, Titus reaches out to a larger community, including Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, Seattle chef Tom Douglas, Yupik artist Apayu'q Moore, and actor Mark Harmon. (Seattle International Film Festival)