HUMAN NATURE

“Human Nature tells the story of CRISPR genome engineering with a gripping mix of science and heart. It gives audiences a front row seat to a technological revolution that could reshape our planet and humanity itself. As we embark on a global conversation about our future, this film is essential viewing.” – Jennifer Doudna

“Every “Oh wow” in “Human Nature” is matched by an “Oh no” somewhere down the line. Together, these two competing emotions — excitement and unease — make for one pretty fascinating documentary.” – The New York Times (Critic’s Pick)

“Those who lament the state of science journalism should take note of Human Nature.” – Hollywood Reporter

“Human Nature” a new film on the technology, braids the tool’s promise and potential perils into a riveting double helix.” – The Washington Post

“Far and away the most intelligent, thought-provoking movie of the young year…See it and be amazed.” – East Bay Express

“Thorough, lucid, and engaging” – The Boston Globe

SYNOPSIS

From executive producer Dan Rather and director Adam Bolt, the co-writer and editor of the Oscar-winning film Inside Job, comes the story of the biggest tech revolution of the 21st Century. And it isn’t digital, it’s biological.

A breakthrough called CRISPR has given us unprecedented control over the basic building blocks of life. It opens the door to curing diseases, reshaping the biosphere, and designing our own children. Human Nature is a provocative exploration of CRISPR’s far-reaching implications, through the eyes of the scientists who discovered it, the families it’s affecting, and the bioengineers who are testing its limits. How will this new power change our relationship with nature? What will it mean for human evolution? To begin to answer these questions we must look back billions of years and peer into an uncertain future.

WATCH ON DEMAND

Or download the Netflix and PBS apps directly onto your smart TV!

PAST SCREENINGS

Date(s)	Festival/Theater	Location
3/10/19, 3/12/19, 3/14/19	SXSW	Austin, TX
3/25/19, 3/27/19, 3/29/19	CPH:DOX	Copenhagen, Denmark
4/5/19	Full Frame	Durham, NC
4/26/19, 4/28/19	AFO	Olomouc, Czech Republic
4/27/19, 4/28/19, 4/30/19	Hot Docs	Toronto, Canada
5/2/19	Newport Beach FF	Newport Beach, CA
5/17/19, 5/25/19, 5/27/19	Seattle International FF	Seattle, WA
6/22/19	AFI Docs	Washington, D.C.
6/23/19	Silbersalz Science & Media Festival	Halle, Germany
7/31/19	Woods Hole FF	Woods Hole, MA
8/17/19	Savonlinna International Nature FF	Savonlinna, Finland
9/12/19	Visioni dal Mondo	Milan, Italy
9/14/19,9/15/19,9/16/19,9/18/19	Homer Documentary Film Festival	Homer, AK
9/23/19	Jackson Wild Summit	Jackson, WY
9/28/19	Sausalito Film Festival	Sausalito, CA
9/26/19, 10/1/19, 10/2/19	Bergen International Film Festival	Bergen, Norway
10/3/19	Globe Docs	Boston, MA
9/27/19,9/28/19,10/10/19	Vancouver International Film Festival	Vancouver, Canada
10/4/19 – 10/10/19	Hot Docs Cinema	Toronto, Canada
10/13/19	Orcas Island Film Festival	Eastsound, WA
10/5/19, 10/14/19	Doctober	Bellingham, WA
10/21/19	Hot Springs Documentary FF	Hot Springs, AR
10/18/19-10/24/19	Bytowne Cinema	Ottawa, Canada
10/25/19	FilmColumbia	Chatham, NY
10/26/19	Pariscience Film Festival	Paris, France
10/28/19	Bay Area Science Festival, Roxie Theater	San Francisco, CA
10/31/19	41 North Film Festival	Houghton, MI
11/2/19	Windsor Film Festival	Windsor, ON
11/3/19	Doctober	Bellingham, WA
11/1/19 – 11/7/19	Hyland Cinema	London, ON
11/5/19	Scottsdale International Film Festival	Scottsdale, AZ
11/6/19	Cinemateket	Oslo, Norway
11/7/19	Life Sciences Film Festival	Prague, Czech Republic
11/9/19	DOC NYC	New York, NY
11/11/19	Goucher College	Towson, MD
11/12/19 – 11/26/19	Broadcast/Streaming on DBS – YesDocu!	Israel
11/15/19, 11/19/19, 11/20/19, 11/28/19	Black Nights Film Festival	Tallinn, Estonia
11/17/19	Yukon Arts Centre	Whitehorse, YT
11/21/19	Vega Scene	Oslo, Norway
11/29/19	Science Museum	London, UK
12/2/19	Midlands Arts Centre	Birmingham, UK
12/6/19	Bertha DocHouse	London, UK
12/7/19	Global Health Film Festival	London, UK
11/7/19-12/26/19	Screenings in various German cities	Germany
12/3/19	Broadcast/Streaming on NRK	Norway
12/18/19	Regent Street Cinema	London, UK
1/8/20	Broadcast/Streaming on VPRO	Netherlands
1/15/20	Soho House	Oxfordshire, UK
1/23/20 – 1/26/20	Reframe Film Festival	Peterborough, Canada
1/22/20, 1/27/20	Tournai Ramdam Festival	Tournai, Belgium
1/29/20	Shuswap Film Society	Salmon Arm, BC, Canada
2/6/20	Paramount Theatre – Kamloops Film Society	Kamloops, BC, Canada
2/7/20	Everyman Cinema	Liverpool, UK
2/12/20	MAC	Birmingham, UK
2/15/20	Woods Hole Film Festival’s Film Falmouth series	Falmouth, MA
2/19/20	The Ultimate Picture Palace	Oxford, UK
2/22/20	KDocsFF	Surrey, Canada
2/24/20, 2/28/20	Sedona International Film Festival	Sedona, AZ
2/28/20	Salt Spring Film Festival	Salt Spring, BC, Canada
3/7/20	Belleville Downtown DocFest	Belleville, ON, Canada
3/13/20 – 3/20/20	The Village East Cinema	NYC, NY
3/13/20 – 3/20/20	Landmark’s Shattuck Cinemas	Berkeley, CA

IMAGES

FILM MAKERS

ADAM BOLT

Director

Adam Bolt edited and co-wrote the Oscar-winning documentary Inside Job, for which he received the Writer’s Guild Award for Best Documentary Screenplay and was nominated for an American Cinema Editors award for Best Edited Documentary in 2011. He won an Emmy in 2014 for his work on the Showtime documentary series Years of Living Dangerously, where he served as senior producer, writer, and editor. His other credits include director Alex Gibney’s Park Avenue: Money, Power & The American Dream, which premiered on PBS’s Independent Lens and went on to win a Peabody Award in 2013; Page One: Inside the New York Times, which was nominated for two Emmys (including Best Editing) in 2012; and the HBO documentary The Recruiter, which won a Columbia duPont award for excellence in broadcast journalism in 2010.

ELLIOT KIRSCHNER

Executive Producer

Elliot Kirschner is the Executive Producer of the Wonder Collaborative, a New York Times best-selling author, and Emmy-award winning news and documentary producer. He got his start at CBS News, producing for such programs as 60 Minutes, Sunday Morning and the Evening News. In 2007, Kirschner joined legendary news icon Dan Rather to help manage a cable news and documentary program where he commissioned and oversaw numerous science reports. He joined iBiology in 2015 and is currently leading the group’s efforts to create content for the general public. His 2017 book What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism, written with Dan Rather, was a bestseller.

REGINA SOBEL

Editor/Co-Writer

Regina Sobel is a Brooklyn-based film editor and producer. She was the editor and co-writer of Fail State (Starz), a feature documentary about inequality in higher education which premiered at DOC NYC in 2017. She also served as editor and producer on Old Dog, a verite documentary about sheep dog training in New Zealand, and associate editor on Alex Ross Perry’s Queen of Earth (IFC Films), starring Elisabeth Moss. Previously, she produced and directed graphics for film and TV, including PBS’s Park Avenue: Money, Power & the American Dream, Showtime’s “Years of Living Dangerously,” and HBO’s “Game of Thrones.”

MEREDITH DESALAZAR

Producer

Meredith DeSalazar is an award-winning news producer with over 13 years experience. She started at ABC News covering the presidential election, then researching and producing for World News Tonight. She joined news legend Dan Rather 10 years ago producing investigative stories, often with a science focus such as: the environmental impact of stormwater runoff, the dark underworld of shark finning and the invasion of lionfish into foreign waters. She was the first television reporter to raise red flags about the danger of concussions and the NFL’s efforts to sweep the issue under the rug.

SARAH GOODWIN

Producer

Sarah Goodwin is the leading science advisor on the film. She is the Executive Director of the Wonder Collaborative and iBiology, a non-profit that produces videos by the world’s leading biologists. Before joining iBiology, she got her Ph.D. in Cell Biology from the University of California, San Francisco. Under her leadership, iBiology has grown in staff and scope, and has produced hundreds of videos with millions of yearly views. Sarah has worked with a wide variety of scientists on communicating their research and stories, and has ensured the science content in this film is accurate in depicting the state of knowledge and the spirit of discovery.

DEREK REICH

Cinematographer

Derek Reich is an Emmy Award winning cinematographer who has traveled to datelines around the globe to capture the images needed for visual storytelling. After getting his start covering the American West for CBS News, Derek expanded into documentary filmmaking with an emphasis on cinematically arresting narratives. He will regale you with stories of bears and dogs.

STEVE TYLER

Editor

Steve Tyler is an Emmy Award winning documentary film editor and long-time collaborator with Human Nature executive producers Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner. Before taking up editing, Steve could be found on Broadway or in theaters around the country as an accomplished music director for shows like The Producers, Jane Eyre and The Sound of Music.

GREG BOUSTEAD

Executive Producer

Greg Boustead is the Program Director at Science Sandbox, an initiative of the Simons Foundation that he helped launch in 2015 to inspire a deeper interest in science, especially among those who don’t think of themselves as science fans. With a background in neuroscience, film, and journalism, Greg has dedicated his career to bringing sophisticated science content to general audiences, across many platforms. Other credits include executive producer of the feature-length documentary The Most Unknown, co-produced with VICE Media/Motherboard and released by Netflix in 2018.

DAN RATHER

Executive Producer

Dan Rather is one of the world’s best-known journalists for much of the last half century. He has interviewed every president since Eisenhower and personally covered almost every important dateline of the last 60 years. Rather joined CBS News in 1962 and in 1981 assumed the position of anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News—a post he held for 24 years. His reporting across the network helped to turn 60 Minutes into an institution, launched 48 Hours as an innovative news magazine program, and shaped countless specials and documentaries. Upon leaving CBS, Rather returned to the in-depth reporting he always loved, creating the Emmy Award winning, Dan Rather Reports on HDNet. Now, he is president and CEO of News and Guts, an independent production company he founded that specializes in high-quality non- fiction content. He has a special interest in telling the stories of science.