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Environmental - Development 2023

An exploratory and sensory record of the largest bat colony in Latin America, located in a densely populated urban area of Rosario, Argentina, reflecting on the relationships between the city and wildlife, science and passion.

- Year of production
- 2023
- Genres
- Environmental, Second film, Documentary
- Countries
- ARGENTINA
- Budget
- 0 - 0.3 M$
- Duration
- 70 mn
- Synopsis
- Rosario, Argentina. A heterogeneous group of people walks through the century-old hallways of the Faculty of Law. Here, students, both men and women, will one day become lawyers and judges. The classrooms are full.
  Violeta, Germán, Agustina, and Irene are scientists, conservationists, and members of the Bat Conservation Program of Argentina (PCMA). They go to visit the bat colony located on the rooftops of the Faculty of Law, the largest in Latin America, in a densely populated area. They climb the stairs, walk across the roof until they reach the central dome of the century-old building, dressed in full-body white suits, and pass through a small window. Thousands of bats swirl around them, emitting a sharp, deafening screech. The visitors feel excited, as the bats have just arrived at the colony to give birth, as they do every November for over a century.
  The conservationists walk through the colony on the mansard roof to the second dome. Sunlight filters through small windows, casting beams of light on a space infested with mites. The walls are covered with bat babies, while adult females fly from side to side. The most densely populated area of bats is also the darkest. The conservationists carry headlamps that they use to highlight what they observe and portable flashlights, creating a highly contrasting environment between light and darkness. Agustina, along with Violeta, catches some animals to obtain the necessary samples for their research on viruses, while Germán and Irene take photos to perform a population count. Later, Germán installs a small infrared camera to record the behavior of the bats.
  The Faculty of Law is located in the commercial and political center of Rosario, one of Argentina’s largest cities, surrounded by buildings, shops, the Government headquarters, and the Museum of Natural Sciences. Afterward, they head to the laboratory at the Museum of Natural Sciences, just 100 meters from the bat colony, where they monitor, measure, and take blood and saliva samples for various research projects. When they finish, they return the bats to the colony after hydrating them. From here, the stories of each of the conservationists and scientists unfold in parallel as they go about their daily activities.