Genesis

A luminously photographed and warmly scored celebration of the ceaseless, mundane miracle of being, feature doc ‘Genesis’ (from the team behind marvelling meadow study ‘Microcosmos’) explores with awe how things came to be; from void to Earth, from big bang to birth and on. Passing through the vast halls of geology (‘it rained for thousands of years’) to flora, and fauna, and us, it’s held together by Sotigui Kouyate’s lucid telling of this greatest of stories, spilling with wonderfully illustrated insight and underscored by an innate sense of scale-shifting connection (‘we are forms irrigated by matter’). Essential viewing for children, adults, politicians and CEOs everywhere, it’s a lyrical masterpiece of democratic looking, and a provocative act of quiet resistance, given its appearance within a human order seemingly in thrall to Thanatos. Both celebratory and implicitly cautioning, ‘Genesis’ delivers the moving image equivalent of Yann Arthus Bertrand’s ‘Earth from the Air’ photography, observing with grace and beauty that ‘we are members of the same tribe, the great tribe of the living.’ And while life is often brutally short, this reminds that Life thankfully is somewhat longer, and larger than our often squalid attempts to erase it.