The plastic-choked albatrosses of Midway; oil-soaked pelicans of the Gulf of Mexico. It’s as if these winged messengers are calling us to witness hard truths, begging us to radically shift our relationships to the planet and ourselves. Sadly, these pleas remain largely unheeded. How do we break this spell of complacency?

Midway is a visceral, poetic film that looks for new answers. It chronicles the journeys of visual artist Chris Jordan and renowned author Terry Tempest Williams, as they traverse the landscapes of two of the planet’s environmental nightmares, each of them exploring how art and storytelling can take us to new territories of acceptance, possibility, and action.

Chris is standing amidst the bunchgrass on Midway Atoll, one of the most remote places on the planet. Here, on the edge of the Pacific Gyre, tons of plastic wash ashore every year. Wiping a mix of sweat and tears from his eyes, he looks through his camera at the skeleton of an albatross chick, one of hundreds he has already documented. Its ribcage is filled with cigarette lighters, bottle caps, and other shards of a throwaway lifestyle, fed to it lovingly by a mother who mistook this detritus for food. Death by plastic.

“That’s the way I’ve been living. That’s me inside. That’s how I feel”.

This is a different kind of photographic mission. It’s an inner journey, a psychological sojourn that is taking Chris deep into the midst of despair and rage. Why? He believes the emotional language of art, conveyed through these feathered messengers, just might hold the key to unlocking the collective will and creativity we need to create a more positive future.

Thousands of miles away, Terry is kneeling in a ravaged wetland in southern Louisiana, feeling utterly helpless as she watches an oil-soaked pelican struggle to fly. Birds have always been a special part of Terry’s life. Throughout her toughest moments, her love of winged ones has steadfastly carried her heart to a needed place of refuge. Now, she is in a place of no refuge: the Gulf oil spill. She has travelled here to help, to witness, to be totally present with the enormity of the toxic tragedy before her. It is one of her most difficult callings.

“How do we not collapse, how do we not become paralyzed, from the truth of what’s happening here?”

Like Chris, Terry is searching for another way of being, and of seeing. For both of them, witnessing is an act of consequence; and whether through the written word, a canvas, a film or a photograph, they believe the role of artists is to never avert their gaze, but to stand in the center of the maelstrom, riding the the pain and transforming it into potential. For them, plastic pollution and oil spills can hold the keystones to the very DNA of change.

“If our eyes are turned inward, art allows our eyes to turn outwards and to see not only what is possible, but what is necessary.”

Midway will probe the inner lives of these two renowned storytellers as they search for new possibilities within their work and themselves. Can they empower us to embrace the difficult solutions humanity faces? Elusive as the answer may be, this provocative film will spark critical conversations about igniting the change we need to turn the world around.