Een geschenk uit de hemel - De slag om de brent spar

In May 1995, Greenpeace activists occupy the Brent Spar, an obsolete oil platform that Shell intends to sink. The images of the heavy-handed removal of these people are broadcast all over the world. Subsequently, ‘The battle for the Brent Spar’ turns into an unprecedented media conflict between the rigid multinational Shell and the idealistic underdog Greenpeace. In this discussion, the actual environmental damage gradually fades into the background. It is David versus Goliath, a fight that in most respects is won by David. In Germany, The Netherlands and England, Shell filling stations are boycotted. The German Chancellor Helmut Kohl even takes up the issue with his British colleague John Major.Director Kees de Groot van Embden and researcher Shuchen Tan reconstruct the events by incorporating eye witness accounts and archive footage: the meticulous preparations by Shell, but also by the bureaucratic Greenpeace; the spectacular actions at sea, with rubber dinghies and water cannons; the media fight, which is not bent to Shell’s will; and the consequences for both organisations of what appears to be a turning point in the relationship between the corporate community and the ecology movement.