Praise for Mathieu Roy & Harold Crooks' SURVIVING PROGRESS
"MIND-EXPANDING...SUBVERSIVE...BRISTLING WITH PROVOCATIVE INSIGHTS. Both brainy and light on its feet, and with wide variety of involving visuals, this mind-expanding ecological documentary bristles with provocative insights and probing questions about humanity and the state of the world. Much more dystopian in its quiet way than 'The Hunger Games.'" - Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
"CRITIC'S PICK! POWERFUL. One percenters won't like what 'Surviving Progress' has to say. It's jam packed with questions...confronting those questions can feel like an all-out assault on our entrenched world views, but it also feels critical to our very existence."
- Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post
" Bone-chilling, entertaining (!) and coherent. It tells the truth." - Roger Ebert
" Elegant…wisely humane to its core, this beautiful new documentary reacquaints us with the idea that not all technological, materialistic and relentlessly acquisitive behavior works either for us or for those around us." - Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune
"Critic’s Choice! An excellent documentary...succinct and entertaining. Colorfully weaves together a vast assortment of audiovisual materials as well as information, to highly watchable results. Do the earth a favor: see this movie, and drag a skeptic you know along." - Dennis Harvey, San Francisco Bay Guardian
"Clear, intelligent, visually striking...paints a portrait of a civilization with an end-game eerily similar to that of the Roman empire." - Mike Scott, The Times-Picayune
"RIVETING. As the filmmakers trace the evolution of the concept of debt, the ways in which technology both created and destroyed empires (Greek, Roman, Mayan) throughout history, and how the 1 percent have hoarded and controlled resources since we left the caves, the film trots out a who's-who of great thinkers—Jane Goodall, Stephen Hawking, Margaret Atwood, assorted scientists and historians—who are riveting as they walk us through the question of whether we will or can survive progress."
- Ernest Hardy, Seattle Weekly
"UNFLINCHING AND THOROUGH. Gorgeous cinematography transports us to far-flung places, and our being there enables us to see and feel the layers upon layers of conflicting interests that make this subject so incredibly complex. The filmmakers end on a relatively hopeful note, assuring us that as long as we confront these issues head on with thoughtfulness, care, determination, and love, we will find a solution. We’ve done it before." - Michael Tully, Hammer to Nail
"AMAZING AND INFORMATIVE. Using stunning imagery reminiscent of 'Koyaanisqatsi', 'Surviving Progress" is brilliant in its non-partisan politics. The film is rich in thought-provoking views...a crucial film for the very real discussion of Earth's shaky future ."
- Lori Huck, Yahoo Movies
"A cinematic wakeup call so cogent and non-didactic even Tea Partiers would be hard-pressed to shrug it off…Progress does a remarkable job weaving together these and many other big ideas in a crisp, coherent, easy-to-take fashion…a stellar cast of articulate and authoritative interviewees." - Dennis Harvey, Variety
"KOYAANISQATSI meets THE CORPORATION in this thought-provoking, brilliantly crafted film about nothing less than the history of the modern world and the fate of civilization."
- Kevin Laforest, Montreal Hour
"STUNNINGLY BRILLIANT. Thought-provoking arguments keep the viewer highly engaged during this compelling film that bids us to all to ask more from ourselves and less from others, and to care more about the steadily dwindling resources of the earth, issues of poverty, and equalities of economy in a world that depletes the natural capital of poor countries to pay debts that its citizens can't." - Michele Wilson-Morris, Music Dish
"One of the most thought provoking documentaries I've ever seen, and also one of the best looking. Epic in scope....takes Jared Diamond's COLLAPSE a step farther."
- Ain't it Cool News
"If AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH and INSIDE JOB had a brainy love child, it might look like SURVIVING PROGRESS." - Brian D. Johnson, MacLeans
"Profoundly provocative… entertains while making you think deeply about human nature -- and whether our brains have evolved sufficiently to handle the technology we've created.”
- Jennifer Merin, About.com
"'Surviving Progress' makes connections between economics, the environment, history, and science to argue that the rules the world currently lives by are unsustainable.”
- Frontline Club
"In the tradition of the best “issue docs” of recent times, this economically crafted, exquisitely argued essay makes its disquieting case without hysteria or prejudice, without irony or jingoism, and with just a soupçon of self-loathing." - Greg Quill, Toronto Star
"Documentary of the year! Takes you beyond current surface environmental and financial disasters into the major mindset adjustments we must undertake if we’re not going to simply build bigger Band-Aids every year until the lights go out."
- Ken Eisner, Straight.com
"An admirable film that's bound to spark necessary and passionate discussions."
- Andrew Parker, NOW Magazine
"A thought-provoking clarion call to stop using our brains in ways which are detrimental to our very survival." - Kam Williams, Nationally Syndicated Film Critic
"Intelligent, compelling and featuring some of the world’s great contemporary thinkers, SURVIVING PROGRESS is nothing short of a massive taking stock. … Like some of the key socio-political documentaries of the last ten years – THE CORPORATION, MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES, AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, FORCE OF NATURE and INSIDE JOB-- SURVIVING PROGRESS raises critical questions about the pivotal mistakes society has made. It does so from a remarkable big-picture perspective, seamlessly tackling multiple and disparate issues."
- Agata Smoluch Del Sorbo, Toronto International Film Festival
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