The documentary PARADOGMA, written and produced by Marijn Poels, wins best documentary at the Independent Film Festival in Paris.
The documentary, which premiered in Potsdam in September this year are about concerns freedom of opinion, censorship and polarization. It is the second part of a planned trilogy.
The first part “The Uncertainty Has Settled” was about the paralyzed debate on about climate change and energy. Therefore Poels was both demonized and praised.
Last year Poels received Best Documentary in Paris with his climate film as well.
According to the jury, PARADOGMA was awarded because “the story deals with a very urgent and sensitive theme and is a strong plea to come together as humanity. Poels has succeeded in making complex themes – polarization, conformism in journalism, intolerance for dissenters visible “.
In part 2 of his trilogy – Poels goes deeper into the phenomenon of denunciation of the dissenting, what is the mechanism behind the tyranny of the ‘majority’. And what the psychological consequences can be if people no longer listen to each other. He looks for the outliers and independent thinkers in his film.
For example, Canadian clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson and ‘the most dangerous philosopher on earth’: the Russian Alexandr Dugin.
Poels, who is currently touring through Europe with PARADOGMA, is pleased with the recognition.
“Initially I wanted to make a completely different film. But due to the aggressive reactions I received after releasing The Uncertainty Has Settled, I found it important to make this story first. With PARADOGMA, I want to pave the road for a broader public debate which is becoming increasingly smaller. We have to come together as people and dare to talk about important and sensitive matters. The solutions to most of our problems, whether that is climate change, migration or else, can only be found outside of the political correct space where we’re in. That’s why we should go across the boundaries of convenience and confront ourselves with dissenters. Over and over again”.
Trailer:
<iframe src=”https://player.vimeo.com/video/282625855″ width=”640″ height=”360″ frameborder=”0” allowfullscreen>
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We have a number of video interviews with Marijn Poels on our YouTube channel.
https://www.youtube.com/user/FriendsofScience/videos
Here Marijn talks about his unexpected journey into these topics:
Interesting how Poels got into this subject (Youtube interview video). I think he’s being to hard on the German effort to spread their risk in energy sourcing. His observations re farming in Germany are not realistic in my opinion. He does not mention that globalization and (relatively) free trade has made it possible to grow crops for everyone in places that offer the greatest efficiency. Diversity is not suffering (I’m a trained international agronomist). He’ right that there is a major shift going on globally in food production, but most of its good. Its not sacrificing diversity. I think we would all agree that Canada is an important agricultural country. Advances in genetics have made it possible for prairie farmers all around us here in Calgary to grow a lot more canola than it used to be. The farmers are still rotating between wheat, alfalfa, etc. Pretty soon we will be growing more corn and other crops. Many of these crops end up in other parts of the world, because shipping has become more efficient (this is also a point that Poels doesn’t mention). – Richard Penner, Calgary