Northwest Film Forum

As the debate over climate change continues, one qualified perspective has been surprisingly absent from the limelight: that of the social scientist. Daniel Miller's new documentary The Anthropologist foregoes the technical descriptions of what is happening to our world and focuses instead on what it means to be human in the face of those changes. The film refreshingly avoids a data-obsessed, pessimistic outlook by framing these issues within the relatable dynamic of two anthropologists who also happen to be mothers, and the impact of their vocations on their respective daughters’ relationships to the transforming world and its myriad cultures.

Following anthropologist Susie Crate and her teenage daughter Katie over the course of five years, and punctuated by insights from the daughter of groundbreaking anthropologist Margaret Mead, the film covers vast geographical and cultural distances. From the tiny and gradually disappearing island nation of Kiribati to the melting glacial peaks of Peru, we observe how global events impact even the most disparate of communities with an equal degree of urgency. It’s a realization made all the more affecting through intimate access to a specific family’s dynamic and their quest to better understand what is going wrong and how all of us can share the burden of working to set it right.