Watching: The Inheritors

Overview

The Inheritors offers an intimately arresting observation of the daily life of a colony of ring-billed gulls which nest alongside Canada’s largest landfill to feed their young. Alternating between the perspectives of prey and predator, we follow these unwanted creatures through a full breeding season as they become the targets of invasive data collection, then of harsh deterrence measures using the age-old art of falconry. With sound and cinematography that lets the birds speak for themselves, The Inheritors is a sensory experience which invites us to contemplate new ways of living and dying on a planet haunted by mass consumption and pollution. A foretelling of the ecologies of our future.