The Beast of Our Time is a fifty-years-in-the-making, unflinching inquiry into the relationship between climate change and grizzly bears, narrated by one of America’s most passionate storytellers, Jeff Bridges. Top scientists, advocates, authors, filmmakers, and poets band together to investigate, and find the fates of both grizzly bears and humans to be more interlinked than we ever suspected. Climate change has mingled our destinies.
Join us on a journey into the heart of the American West, and its last remnants of a once-great nation of grizzly bears. We will visit with multiple generations of ranchers who have learned to co-exist in grizzly country, and hear predictions from leading scientists. Buffeted with stunning cinematic vignettes and pleas for the wild, the film is part documentary, part love story.
The Beast of Our Time is both a dire warning and a compelling call to action that delves into the catastrophic effects of climate change on grizzly bear habitat. The story is rivaled by the striking cinematography that brings viewers right onto the landscape, walking side by side with this imperiled population of grizzly bears.
Maaike Middleton is a wildlife filmmaker. She was born in The Netherlands and grew up in Montana. She has traveled the globe filming wildlife from pumas in Patagonia, the elusive Amur tiger in the Russian Far East and grizzlies in her backyard. Maaike is passionate about telling stories that make a difference and address issues that impact us all. When she is not setting camera traps to capture animal behavior she is watching film and helping with the section process for the Wildlife Film Festival Rotterdam. She has worked on projects for Smithsonian, Nat Geo, Netflix, BBC, PBS and Arte.