Floodland

The project explores pertinent themes around regional class divides, government mismanagement, and the growing impact of climate change on the “Australian way of life”. Floodland follows a young family’s journey in the aftermath of the tragedy, to create a compelling human story that goes beyond the headlines. At the same time, Floodland urges viewers to consider how these experiences may affect us all over time, and asks what lessons we can learn from the Lismore floods to help prevent these types of disasters continuing as we enter a new era of climate distress. In doing so, Floodland is not just capturing a moment in time, but can be seen to be a document for the future, a warning that can be heeded by listening to the experiences of those in the documentary and ensuring that policy and good governance are in place to support Australia’s most marginalised communities.

Our impact vision is to show the human cost of climate change on communities like Lismore. By showing character driven, longitudinal stories in the wake of the 2022 flooding, the film will evoke both outrage and hope for other at-risk communities across Australia. We hope to generate awareness and action towards campaigning for future disaster preparedness so that we can minimise the ecological and societal harm caused by the extremes of climate change, forces that threaten to fracture and decimate many more communities just like Lismore.

We hope this film not only offers the survivors of this devastating event a voice, but that it can also aid communities of the future in speaking up and taking a stand against political incompetence in the face of a climate crisis. We strive to create a film that emerges as unique, enduring, and that stands like a bollard in the way of anyone wanting to deny the seriousness and severity of the state of the world today. Floodland urges viewers to consider how these experiences may affect us all over time, and asks what lessons we can learn from the Lismore floods to help prevent these types of disasters continuing as we enter a new era of climate distress.

Director Jordan Giusti considers Lismore a home away from home, travelling there regularly to visit his partner’s family. It pained him to see a community he knows and loves struggle to recover from the devastating floods. Returning to Lismore in the wake of the disaster, Jordan met local families who were doing it tough, scrambling to restore their homes and establish a safe place to live. Inspired to tell their story, he immersed himself in the community for 18 months, speaking to those who had been affected and collecting footage to show everything they had gone through. This intimate approach has led to in-depth access to perspectives not shown in the sensationalist news coverage. Jordan has witnessed moments that could only be captured by collaborating and developing trust with the film’s participants in a deep, meaningful way.

Our call to action will be to encourage audiences to imagine two very different future paths; one of apathetic acceptance that many communities like those seen in Lismore will inevitably fracture and be lost forever, and one of motivation to seek out and act on what can be done to fight for a better future for oneself and others. With ambition to generate empathy through our character driven narrative, we will point our audience towards various resources to learn more about the situation in Lismore and the global effects of climate change, ultimately implying a final question: which path will they choose to take?