CPH:DOX 2025: Lowland Kids (dir. Sandra Winther) | Review
Through the touching story of Howard, Juliette, and their uncle Chris, director Sandra Winther captures the urgency of the climate crisis and its already visible impact on vulnerable communities.
Isle de Jean Charles, located in southern Louisiana, has been home to the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Nation for generations. Yet, in less than a century, the island has lost over three-quarters of its landmass. This territory, exposed to the Gulf of Mexico – a region of intensive oil extraction – was heavily carved with canals in the postwar years to ease access to drilling sites, which contributed to accelerating the natural erosion of the coastline. The weakened soil became even more vulnerable to increasingly frequent and powerful hurricanes, which flooded the land with saltwater, destroying the local flora and fauna. It is on this narrow strip of land that Howard and Juliette live with their uncle Chris, who took them in after their parents’ death. In Lowland Kids, director Sandra Winther filmed this makeshift family over several years as they fought to preserve their unity and identity, both threatened by the destruction of their home. The feature-length documentary celebrated its world premiere at CPH:DOX 2025, where it was presented in the NORDIC:DOX section.
Maintaining a respectful distance from her subjects and avoiding any trace of miserabilism, the director filmed the protagonists over the years, capturing their evolution as they transition from adolescence into young adulthood. While the early moments are marked by joyful moments and strong family bonds, the dynamic is shaken by Hurricane Ida in 2021, which destroyed most of the island’s remaining habitable homes. Realizing the growing risks to his loved ones and determined to secure their future, Chris decides to join the government’s relocation program, which resettles the island’s residents further inland. By documenting the protagonists’ heartbreak as they grapple with the tension between seeking material security and remaining attached to their homeland, the director highlights the importance of the connection to the land in community dynamics and in shaping each individual’s identity.
With striking realism, Sandra Winther delivers a powerful and timely film that documents the urgency of the climate crisis. The rising sea levels – driven by human-induced global warming – have been encroaching for decades and are already directly affecting western territories. A film that proves all the more necessary in the face of the growing influence of climate-skeptic ideologies spreading across the West.
