This is ground control to director Kyra.
Kyra Sedgwick sat down for a Q&A panel about her narrative feature “Space Oddity” at an afternoon cocktail reception for the Tribeca Film Festival on Saturday. Joining her were “Space Oddity” actors Kyle Alle and Alexandra Shipp as well as the producer (Sabrina Schmidt Gordon) and director (Rachel Lears) from the climate change activism documentary “To The End.” In attendance was Sedgwick’s husband — and supporting “Space Oddity” actor — Kevin Bacon.
The panel put the two films in conversation with one another about social justice and climate change. Sedgwick’s film is about a young man’s decision between embarking on a one way journey to Mars and staying home to be with his family, loved ones and planet.
“It’s a story about a family having to deal with grief and loss, but also very much about how we are checking out on the planet,” said Sedgwick. “Certainly when you say Mars now, that’s a buzz word. That means it’s not going to work out here, so we’re going to have a plan B. But we don’t have a plan b. And we have utopia here. We have everything here. The hope of the movie is that it is a love letter to Earth. It is a quiet call to action.”
She continued, “It’s really about a young man that chooses this planet even though things are hard, even though people die, even though the planet is struggling. He’s going to fight the good fight down here and the whole family is going to fight the good fight together.”
Lears, known for her breakthrough documentary “Knock Down the House” about four progressive women’s congressional primary campaigns, talked about how her latest documentary “To The End” was, like Sedgwick’s film, also a call to action.
“I always want to do impact campaigns along with my films. We turn it into a tool,” Lears said. “We use this film to help galvanize the most vulnerable communities, which are communities of color and other marginalized communities.”
“Space Oddity” premiered at Tribeca on Sunday, June 12.