Everglades Doc River of Grass Would Be Important With or Without Alligator Alcatraz

When Sasha Wortzel set out to make a documentary about the Everglades, she never expected it would become so tragically timely. 

The Southwest Florida-born, New York-based artist and filmmaker’s River of Grass is an impressionistic and endearing portrait of the eco-region inspired by Marjory Stoneman Douglas’ famed nonfiction book of the same name. Mixing archival interviews with the environmentalist with text from the book, new and old footage of the Everglades themselves, and poetic recollections from the director, the film is a unique mix of issue film and diaristic essay. 

For Wortzel, as a born-and-raised Floridian, the Everglades are central to her conception of the state and its identity, yet remain sadly misunderstood or ignored by transplants and tourists. She felt she needed to make a film that explained what makes the Everglades “so unique and important,” and one that presented an alternative vision of Florida.  

“I didn’t feel like I’d seen a sort of environmental or climate film that represented the kind of realities that I feel I’m living through, and the kind of actual raw emotion that we experience,” she says. “So often, especially right now, the images and the representations of this place that we know and love are portrayed as this really backwards, messed-up, wild ‘Florida Man’ place, and it’s either the butt of the joke, or like, ‘Oh, I wish Florida would just disappear into the ocean.’ But we know that actually, there’s also a lot of really amazing communities and people and beautiful ecosystems and an environment like no other place in the United States and all of the country. That’s what moves me to make more nuanced and complex representations of the state of Florida, one that can hold both the devastation and the real, violent realities that we’re living through, but also the beauty and abundance and complexities of our state.”

Some of those violent realities revealed themselves after the film premiered in Columbia, Missouri, at the True/False Film Festival in February. Mere months later, the Trump administration announced its plans to build a massive immigration detention camp at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, a little-known airstrip deep in the Everglades featured in the film. The ICE-run facility, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” by the Trump Administration, has drawn comparisons to Nazi concentration camps, and many of its detainees have disappeared from ICE databases after being transferred out of the prison. 

As fate would have it, a major character in the film has also become the face of the fight against the camp. Betty Osceola, a Miccosukee tribal leader and activist seen in the film leading prayer walks through the Everglades, has led demonstrations against the facility. The Miccosukee Tribe itself joined a lawsuit against the facility, citing tribal rights and environmental dangers. U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams initially ordered construction halted at the site on August 7 before two Trump-appointed appeals court judges reversed the decision in early September. 

“I never could have predicted how timely the film would be, given that this cruelly-named detention center, Alligator Alcatraz, would be opening right after the film came out,” Wortzel says. “We’re in a really, particularly pivotal moment where this whole fabric of environmental protections that I’ve known growing up all my life and maybe have taken for granted in many ways could go away; and that this case that the Miccosukee Tribe and Friends of the Everglades and others are fighting is really going to be a deciding factor for whether this sets a precedent that those things can go away or be circumvented.”

Indeed, as Wortzel’s film shows, Alligator Alcatraz is merely the tip of the iceberg. Far from simply being an artistic tribute to the unique eco-region, the film presents the Everglades as a territory riddled with low-simmering conflict over its place amid Florida’s endless economic development. Even the name is contentious, with Osceola stating outright that Stoneman Douglas “stole” the name “river of grass” from the indigenous Seminole and Miccosukee (the author corroborates this herself, crediting them with inspiring the book title in archival footage shown later in the film). 

Both women agree, however, that the Everglades must be allowed to flow freely. Since as far back as the 19th century, misguided efforts have been made to develop the swamplands for agriculture and other purposes. Drainage projects gave way to the current system of roads, canals, and levees that control the flow and supply South Florida’s drinking water. They date back to 1947 — the same year Stoneman Douglas’ River of Grass was published and Everglades National Park was established. 

The film shows some of the negative effects of this corralling of the wetlands, which would naturally and slowly flow south if unimpeded. Algae blooms sweep through the canals and into the ocean, causing mass die-offs of sea life. We witness stone crab fishermen bemoaning diminished catches and veterinarians treating birds infected by Red Tide. Residents near Lake Okeechobee protest against pollution unleashed by the sugarcane industry, sickened by toxic chemicals from pesticides released into the air by slash-and-burn farming. 

And then there’s that lonely airstrip: The Alligator Alcatraz site was originally planned to become a massive international jetport. But as the film shows, activists such as Stoneman Douglas, who founded the Friends of the Everglades to oppose the development, as well as the Miccosukee Tribe and its chief Buffalo Tiger, stopped the project. It’s scenes like this that show how unresolved issues can echo into today’s crises, and how we can learn from past activism to inform present actions.

“I do hope that this film can play a role in hopefully educating people, educating the public about the history of the Everglades and the region,” Wortzel says. “And I think it does set itself up as a really ready primer for this moment of how we got here.” 

River of Grass. Playing through Thursday, October 23, at Coral Gables Art Cinema, 260 Aragon Ave., Coral Gables; 786-472-2249. Tickets cost $12.75 via gablescinema.com.