The Salt of the Earth

The Salt of the Earth (Le sel de la terre, 2014) is a documentary by Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, and you can watch it online on iFILM. It traces forty years in the work of Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado, who spent his career following humanity across five continents — through famine, war, refugee crises and vanishing ways of life.

Two voices tell the story, and that's where the film finds its shape. Wenders looks at the photographs as a fellow image-maker; Juliano, the photographer's son, looks at them as a boy who grew up with a father who was always somewhere else. Salgado himself narrates his own black-and-white frames, his face reflected on the glass in front of the lens. From the Serra Pelada gold mines to the horror he documented in Rwanda, he recorded the worst people do to one another until he nearly lost faith in the species — then turned his camera toward untouched wilderness to find it again.

The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary and picked up a prize at Cannes. One for anyone drawn to photography and a life told on a grand scale. Stream The Salt of the Earth (2014) online on iFILM.