Saratoga students earn film festival honors for ‘Environmental Justice’

Short documentary focuses on toxic waste in a small California city.

Five Saratoga High School students earned kudos for their short documentary about a small California city that is a dumping ground for toxic waste.

Seniors Simarya Ahuja, George Hu, Nicita Raamkumar Alexa Shuey and Caitlin Weber received an honorable mention for their five-minute film “Environmental Justice” at the One Earth Film Festival in Chicago in September. The documentary focuses on Kettleman City, CA, home of a Class 1 landfill that has led to a sharp rise in congenital disabilities in the area.

The student filmmakers made “Environmental Justice” as a project for Saratoga High School’s Media Arts Program, in which they were asked to create a documentary that addressed an issue in the United States and propose a realistic solution to it. The students chose environmental racism, focusing on the disproportionate effect of environmental policies on low-income and underrepresented communities.

“Environmental Justice” features interviews with Jorge Pacheco, an ethnic studies teacher in Menlo Park; Matthew Tejada, an Environmental Protection Agency representative; and Miguel Alatorre, a Kettleman City resident who was part of a group that fought Chemical Waste Management’s plan to build a toxic waste incinerator in the city.

“The community’s success fighting against the corporation is one of the most prominent and inspirational victories for the environmental justice movement,” says the documentary’s narrator.

Bringing stories of people working on sustainability issues to the screen is the goal of the One Earth Film Festival. In its ninth year, the festival is open to students from grade 3 through college level.

In addition to its festival honors, “Environmental Justice” was also named Best American Issues Documentary at SMASH’N 2023, the annual awards night for the Media Arts Program.