“Better to die of cancer than of hunger,” are words you may well hear on Priolo beach in Sicily. In the shadows of the lovely city of Syracuse lies one of Europe’s largest petrochemical complexes. 70 years after the arrival of the first refineries, the area seems to have been abandoned to its fate as poison taints the sky, water and land. Woven around fragments supplied by residents who resist, are resigned, or choose to look the other way, the film Toxicily sets out to tell the tale of a place sacrificed on the altar of progress, modernity and globalisation.
"Sobering, accurate and tragically poetic, Toxicily gets straight to the heart of the matter, exploring a health and environmental emergency which can no longer be ignored and which continues to claim victims against a backdrop of more or less generalised indifference. Paradoxical, wonderful but also terrifying, the Sicily depicted by the French-Italian directorial duo urges us to ask what our future will look like if we keep on refusing to open our eyes." —Giorgia Del Don, Cineuropa
"Stunning yet heartbreaking documentary...What is stunning about Toxicily is that while the subject matter is downright tragic, the way the film is shot and how its stories are told, is both visually stunning and emotionally relatable." —E. Nina Rothe
