THE FILM
Plastic People is a landmark feature documentary that chronicles humanity’s fraught relationship with plastic and one woman’s mission to expose shocking new revelations about the impact of microplastics on human health.
UPCOMING SCREENINGS
DOXA 2024 (Vancouver, BC)
CANADIAN PREMIERE:
Princess Twin Cinemas (Waterloo, ON)
PAST SCREENINGS
SXSW 2024 (Austin, Texas)
WORLD PREMIERE
TBA
TBA
TBA
Want to host a Plastic People screening in your community?
Visit the Take Action page for more information.
ABOUT PLASTIC PEOPLE
The ground-breaking feature documentary Plastic People investigates our addiction to plastic and the growing threat of microplastics on human health. Almost every bit of plastic ever made breaks down into “microplastics.” These microscopic particles drift in the air, float in all bodies of water, and mix into the soil, becoming a permanent part of the environment.
Now, leading scientists are finding these particles in our bodies: organs, blood, brain tissue, and even the placentas of new mothers. What is the impact of these invisible invaders on our health? And can anything be done about it?
Acclaimed author and science journalist Ziya Tong takes a personal approach by visiting leading scientists around the world and undergoing experiments in her home, on her food, and her body while collaborating with award-winning director Ben Addelman (Discordia, Bombay Calling, Nollywood Babylon, Kivalina v. Exxon) in an urgent call to action for all of us to rethink our relationship with plastic.
ABOUT THE TEAM
Ben Addelman
Director
Ben Addelman is the director of four award-winning feature documentaries (Discordia, Nollywood Babylon, Bombay Calling, Kivalina vs Exxon) and numerous TV series (Becoming You, Payday, Limitless). His fifth feature documentary – Plastic People – will be released in 2024.
His films have screened at major festivals including Sundance, SXSW, Hotdocs, Edinburgh, Human Rights Watch NYC and Whistler. His work has been broadcast on Apple TV+, Disney +, Netflix, BBC, Viceland, CBC, Sundance Channel, National Geographic, and others.
Ziya Tong
Co-Director
Award-winning broadcaster Ziya Tong is best known as the anchor of Daily Planet, Discovery Channel’s flagship science program. Her book The Reality Bubble won the Lane Anderson award for best science writing in Canada, and was shortlisted for the prestigious RBC Taylor Prize in 2020. It has earned praise from luminaries including Naomi Klein and David Suzuki who calls Tong’s book “required reading for all who care about what we are doing to the planet.”
Tong also hosted the CBC’s Emmy-nominated series ZeD, PBS’s national prime-time series, Wired Science, and worked as a correspondent for NOVA scienceNOW alongside Neil deGrasse Tyson on PBS. In the spring of 2019, she participated in CBC’s annual “battle of the books”. After a national four-day debate, she won CBC Canada Reads. Ziya previously served as the Vice Chair of the World Wildlife Fund Canada, and is currently on the board of directors of WWF International.
Roger Singh
Cinematographer
With over a decade of experience as a cinematographer, and over 50 credits in film and television, Roger Singh brings the consistency and professionalism necessary to meet what the modern industry demands.
Singh’s credits include the recently completed series, Becoming You, produced by Warner Bros UK for Apple TV+, The Pirate Tapes, a film that went undercover and looked at the lives of Somali Pirates as they planned a future heist, the upcoming Disney+ series, Limitless, and a documentary feature project produced by Oscar Winner Joanna Natasegara and directed by Oscar Nominated Waad Al-Kateab.
Ania Smolenskaia
Editor
Ania Smolenskaia is an award-winning documentary and branded content editor. Since 2007 she has edited hundreds of hours of news and online content, from U.S. presidential elections to sailing races in France to Olympic Torch Relays in the U.K. and Brazil. Ania has edited and post-produced short films for independent productions as well as global brands like Hugo Boss, Land Rover, Jaguar, Nespresso and directed short films and TV spots for McLaren, Coca-Cola and Richard Mille.
Her long-form documentary work has been broadcast on television and screened at festivals in Europe and North America. Ania’s recent documentary feature credits include Becoming Nobody, where a spiritual guru, Ram Dass, explores our universal human condition, and Relentless, a story of an off-shore sailor’s attempt to win one of the most grueling single-handed ocean races in the world, which won a Silver Dolphin at Cannes. Ice-Breaker: The 1972 Summit Series (2022) is the most recent documentary Ania edited prior to Plastic People.
Vanessa Dylyn
Producer
Vanessa Dylyn is an Emmy-nominated and Canadian Screen Award-winning producer of documentary programming. Recently released is The Divided Brain for the CBC’s documentary Channel, a feature-length film featuring renowned psychiatrist Dr Iain McGilchrist. Her recent documentary credits include Into the Inferno, a Werner Herzog coproduction about man’s relationship with volcanoes for Netflix; Undercover Jihadi for TVO, an international film featuring Mubin Shaikh, a reformed Jihadi; a UK co-production The Woman Who Joined the Taliban, for the CBC; Leslie Caron: the Reluctant Star, about the career of the star of An American in Paris, for ARTE and TVO.
Now in production is her series concept, developed for Entertainment One, Arctic Vets. Currently in development: The Phage Hunters: How a Good Virus Can Save Your Life. Becoming Liona Boyd, about the iconic guitarist. Other notable credits include The Musical Brain, featuring Sting, Feist, and Michael Bublé, for CTV/ Nat Geo International.
Stephen Paniccia
Producer
Stephen has over 25 years of experience in the film and television industry as a producer, director of production, director of business affairs and is a man with his eye on the ball. Operationally astute, executionally excellent and forever finance-focused, Stephen revels in delivering superb production values on an “on time, on budget” basis.
As prolific as he is pragmatic, Stephen is the proud producer of award-winning documentaries Buffy Sainte-Marie: Carry It On, winner of the 2023 International Emmy for Best Arts Programming, Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band, the Emmy-nominated Toxic Beauty and YTV kids documentary Citizen Kid, for White Pine Pictures. As a Windsor, Ontario native and lifelong Detroit Tigers fan, Stephen understands loyalty and what it’s like to root for the underdog.
Peter Raymont
Executive Producer
Filmmaker, journalist, writer, Peter Raymont has produced and directed over 100 films and TV series during his 53-year career. His documentary feature, Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire was honoured with the 2007 Emmy for Best Documentary and the Audience Award for World Cinema Documentaries at the Sundance Film Festival.
Raymont’s films are often provocative investigations of “hidden worlds” in politics, the media, and big business. Guantanamo’s Child: Omar Khadr (2016) was nominated for an Emmy and received three Canadian Screen Awards. Raymont was an Executive Producer, along with Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard and Brian Grazer of Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band. He was the Executive Producer of, Buffy Sainte-Marie: Carry It On which won the 2023 International Emmy for Best Arts Documentary and Unloved: Huronia’s Forgotten Children, which premiered at 2022 Hot Docs International Film Festival.
Plastic People is his most recent documentary feature, which is having its world premiere at the 2024 SXSW Festival.
Rick Smith
Executive Producer & Author
For more than twenty years, Rick Smith has worked to protect people from the damaging impacts of pollution. He is President of the Canadian Climate Institute, Canada’s leading climate change policy research organization. He has written two books on the topic of toxic chemicals in the human body including the international best-seller Slow Death by Rubber Duck, which the Washington Post said “is hard-hitting in a way that turns your stomach and yet also instills hope.”
Previously the Executive Director of Environmental Defence Canada, Rick has a Ph.D. in biology and was a prominent, on-camera, expert for the 2021 International Emmy Nominee, Toxic Beauty. Plastic People began as a feature article that Rick wrote in 2020 for Canada’s national newspaper, the Globe and Mail, for which he tested his own body for microplastic pollution.
TAKE ACTION TODAY
As part of the commitment to facilitate a conversation shift around this urgent health issue, Plastic People is developing an impact campaign in support of the film. Working closely with a number of partners, the impact team will execute a solution-based program that will include a number of events, education materials, as well as calls to action. Visit the Take Action page for more information.
Plastic People is a landmark feature documentary that chronicles humanity’s fraught relationship with plastic and one woman’s mission to expose shocking new revelations about the impact of microplastics on human health.
Privacy Policy
© 2024 PLASTIC PEOPLE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.