A Common Sequence

The experimental documentary examines the intersections between capitalism, technology, and survival of nature and with it humanity. Within the human struggle to live and work on a changing planet, questions of value, extraction, and adaptation echo across seemingly disparate worlds. Showing the stories of Dominican nuns running a conservation lab, a group of fisherman attempting to live off of a depleting lake, engineers developing AI-driven harvesting machines, and an indigenous biomedical researcher resisting the commodification of human DNA, the film becomes a meditation on the shifting border between the natural and unnatural world, and the dynamics of power at play. “Delving into labour and science practices, A COMMON SEQUENCE examines who gets to work with the essentials of life — saving animals from extinction, researching medicine, harvesting food, coding the genome — in our modern world controlled by data.” (Mike Plante) (kw)