Welcome to the very first Wild Commons newsletter.

We're glad you're here. This newsletter exists because we want to make sure that algorithms don’t determine whether you get to see the great films on our platform. This is your way of ensuring that you will always be notified when new films land! If you’re not subscribed to our YouTube channel yet…

With each newsletter, we'll bring you our new film releases, behind-the-scenes stories from our filmmakers, and some parts of the story that didn’t make it into the final cut. 

For this first issue, we're going deep on the debut film on our platform: Hellbent.

Thank you for being here.

Now showing

Hellbent

In rural Pennsylvania, 700 people share a single source of clean drinking water. Beneath those same streams lives one of North America's most ancient and unlikely creatures: the hellbender salamander - a half-metre-long giant that has survived for 160 million years, and needs pristine, fast-moving water to survive.

When a proposed fracking waste injection well threatened both, two determined women - Judy and Stacy - decided to take matters into their own hands. Hellbent, co-directed by Annie Roth and Justin Grubb, follows what happened next: a community that organized, fought back, and made a bold, unexpected legal move - adopting a Community Bill of Rights that recognised the rights of nature itself as a tool for protection.

Behind the scenes

In Conversation with Annie Roth & Justin Grubb

The directors had a serious challenge on their hands - how do you make an audience fall in love with a creature most people have never heard of? And why does telling the story of a community matter just as much as telling the story of the animal?

"Hellbenders have a weird cult following — people name beer after them, put them on t-shirts, and even bake giant hellbender cakes. The community celebrates hellbenders as a signal that the water is clean and habitat is healthy."

— Justin Grubb, Co-Director

For Annie, she wanted to explore how to make an amphibian feel endearing? "It can be tough because some people find them a bit creepy." But I think they look adorable in our film, even if others might disagree." The key, she says, is falling in love first - before the call to action. "Every animal has something fantastic about it. If you can make them seem relatable, you can make someone fall in love with it."

"We wanted to tell the animal's story, but we needed a vehicle. When we discovered this community calling themselves the East Run Hellbender Society, we knew we had it."

— Annie Roth, Co-Director

Read the full interview with Annie and Justin over at Sony's Echoes series here.

From the field

The making of Hellbent

A few frames from the making of Hellbent.

That's it for Issue 01. Thank you for being here at the very beginning - it means a lot to us.

Wild Commons exists because we believe independent environmental filmmakers deserve a real path to audiences. Every subscriber, every view, every share helps make that possible.

The next film is coming soon. You'll hear about it here first.

With gratitude,

Matthew, Kika, Hannah & Jackson

The Wild Commons Team