As Parkinson’s disease advances, pioneering biologist Joanne Chory races to re-engineer plants and help save the planet.
Plant Life follows Chory at a pivotal moment. Having revolutionized plant biology once already, she and her team set out to develop crops with deeper, carbon-rich roots—an ambitious effort to draw down atmospheric CO₂ and store it underground. The film is both an intimate portrait and a scientific race against time.
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Joanne Chory is one of the world’s most influential plant biologists—a scientist who helped reveal how plants perceive and respond to their surroundings.
Working at the Salk Institute, Dr. Chory uncovered genetic systems that let plants sense light, time their growth, adapt to shade, and respond to hormones. Her discoveries—including revealing how plant steroid hormones control growth—totally redefined modern plant biology and opened vast new possibilities for agriculture and beyond.
Elected to nine scientific academies, including the Royal Society and the National Academy of Sciences, she has received the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, the Gruber Genetics Prize, and the Benjamin Franklin Medal. As founding director of Salk’s Harnessing Plants Initiative, Dr. Chory brings decades of discovery to an urgent question: can plants store more carbon underground—and help slow climate change?
Brett Marty is a commercial director and filmmaker whose work has been commissioned or featured by Patagonia, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and NatGeo. His recent doc work includes Game Hawker for Patagonia Films and Eco-Hack!, winner of Best Short Documentary awards at Hot Docs, Palm Springs, and Interfilm Berlin.
Josh Izenberg is an Oakland-based documentary filmmaker. His short Slomo won awards at SXSW and from the International Documentary Association; Resurface won a Tribeca jury prize, was acquired by Netflix, and was nominated for an Emmy.
For interviews, screening inquiries, a press screener, or additional materials, reach the filmmakers at:
plantlife@speculativefilms.comDr. Chory in the Salk greenhouse (opens in a new tab)
Dr. Chory examining plants under a microscope (opens in a new tab)
Examining root structure of Arabidopsis thaliana (opens in a new tab)
Dr. Wolfgang Busch in the Salk greenhouse (opens in a new tab)
Science animation still from the film (opens in a new tab)
Cinematography by Phil Briggs Edited by Aldona Watts Music by Amanda Jones Executive Producers Chad Cohen & Jared Lipworth Associate Producer Tate Lancaster Art & Animation Director Bruce Alcock Color by Dan Edwards
Sound Design & Re-recording Mixer Jeremiah Moore Time-lapse Photography by Chris Field
