Matthew Toffolo interviewed Liz Smith for the WILDsounds podcast about The Line We Crossed. In June the film won the audience award for best feature film at the WILDsounds Environmental Film Festival. It is always heartening to receive an accolade like that, but what is particularly interesting about this award is that the audience were Canadian. The Line We Crossed is a film about British activists and the repression of protest rights in Britain. It is about British laws and yet it appears to be resonating with people living in other democracies.
This is a struggle that affects so many people and it appears that the film is able to speak to other communities living in democracies who are also facing an assault on their protest rights, and who are struggling to raise the alarm about the climate and ecological crisis. Last week things took an even darker turn in the UK when it comes to the clamping down on dissent by The State. As Matthew said, while you don’t necessarly want it to be, this is a timely movie.
The podcast begins with the interviewer trying to get his head around why defendants weren’t being allowed to explain to the jury why they were protesting. They then move on to talk about the people in the film and spend some time discussing the filmmaking process.
