Review: Black Butterflies beautifully brings attention to the plight of climate refugees

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and the three protagonists of director David Baute's Black Butterflies (Mariposas Negras) find themselves in very desperate times. As do we all, facing a climate crisis that gets worse every year, causing millions to become refugees seeking safer places to call home. How long those places will remain safe, who can say. The scope of the worldwide devastation of floods, hurricanes, droughts, changing sea levels is impossible to fully encompass or understand, but in this film, Baute does an admirable job of weaving multiple stories into a global narrative: climate change is coming for us all, and we all must band together to fight it.

Baute tends toward documentary filmmaking, and has passion for documenting climate change. But when he conceived of this project more than eight years ago, he had an idea for a novel approach: to tell it through animation. He approached producer Edmond Roch, who had worked in animation, but usually to tell family-friendly, 3D-animated stories, stories that lend themself to easier financing futures. Together, they toiled away, creating a new studio of about 25 animators who used Blender to bring this story (these stories) to life. And now, here we are. Or, almost are: the film releases in Spanish theaters in early December.

Black Butterflies tells the story of three women in different parts of the world. A mother and her two children flee from Saint Martin to Paris to escape the devastation of hurricanes, and tries to navigate the labyrinthine government bureaucracy so that her husband can join them there. An Indian woman takes a job in Dubai as a domestic worker to support her family, unknowingly entering into what is essentially slavery. In Africa, a woman and her children move to Nairobi to escape the drought that has plagued their tribe and led to war with neighboring factions. There, she struggles to find a way to provide for her family.

If it sounds bleak, it very much is. This is a tough watch, and an important one. These stories are inspired by real women (during the Q&A with producer Roch after the film, I couldn't quite tell if this is a documentary or if they consider it a documentary), and each of their stories are handled with care. Each of their cultures is authentically represented, which had me thinking about how wide-ranging the victims of climate change are. Not just the communities that are so far apart geographically. But culture itself, language and music and community, can become a victim of climate change. It's hard to fathom how much is lost when these communities are ravaged, the people scattered, the land changed. So much local color, culture, religion, and food winds its way through these stories, creating a sort of long shadow behind each woman: their stories encompass, include, echo the stories of countless others. 

At the end of the film, one of the facts shared on screen estimates that more than 200 million people are currently climate refugees, a class that isn't even recognized as a refugee because it isn't covered by the Geneva Conventions. Over and over again, these refugees are dehumanized, mistreated, shuffled around, and forgotten. It's a brutal, ugly cycle.

The film smartly plots these stories by starting with the characters' departures from their homes, but not explaining why. Instead, we travel with them and see them settling into their new spaces, figuring out the hows and whys of where they now are. Then, about halfway through the film or so, we jump back two years. Then we discover the connective tissue, the climate emergencies that set these women in motion. It's a smart structure that then feeds directly into actual footage of these woman, and of climate emergencies around the world, accompanied by a lovely original song and lots of ominous text. Roch said he hopes that people leave the film with knowledge, and I don't see how they won't. I hope, too, that they leave with more profound empathy for the people around them, and the people further from them. 

The eponymous black butterflies start appearing toward the end of the film, in scenes from all three stories, potent symbols of the refugees. Butterflies, in all their delicate beauty, and in their migratory behaviors, are an apt metaphor here, innocents being buffeted by the ravages of weather, displaced, not knowing where to go. They're used in a couple really haunting shots that border on horror. Some of the film's most lasting images.

I also loved the way that the scenes of storms are rendered with a different animation style. While most of the film feels very grounded in its visual approach, these hectic scenes become more abstract, more dangerous, monochromatic squalls that are a little hard to parse, and impossible not to feel.

Just like the film as a whole. It's impossible to walk away from it not feeling a little heavier, world-weary, maybe hopeless. But art like this matters, and it can help inspire change. Roch was able to share that the film has been booked to show at the United Nations soon, an exciting step forward for a film that wants to help bring the plight of millions to the attention of more people, especially ones who can help in material ways. Let's hope it accomplishes this feat.