A time traveler must make a crucial sacrifice to save the future of the planet.

The Ends of the Earth is a cerebral sci-fi picture combining elements of documentary and fiction. This meditation on filmmaking and the future of the planet features striking visuals, a world music soundtrack and contemplative pacing. At the center of the story is Jonah, a time traveler who makes a decision that determines the fate of human life on Earth.

I’d been toying with the idea of making a feature film as a one-man crew, with very few (and unknown) actors, using documentary and news footage I’d collected over the years, and combining them with fictional scenes that would be constructed from readily available props, costumes, and interiors.

I was also heavily influenced by the low-budget science fiction film Primer (2004), a hand-built, nearly budgetless feature made by the do-it-yourself director Shane Carruth, that I feel is one of the most exotic and consistently challenging independent films made in the last 20 years. I also wanted to tackle a few political and environmental themes, such as the hypocrisy and betrayal of/by our elected officials and the effects of global warming on the planet.

All of the above however was secondary to my most important goal with this film, which was to single-handedly construct a film free from monetary and commercial constraints, to operate with complete autonomy to either ignore or embrace the clichés and mechanics that plague many independent films these days. I wanted to make a film in which the tools of cinema—image, sound, music, montage—merged with a flow of ideas and a blending of formats—documentary and fiction—within the basic boundaries of a genre: the post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie. I wanted to treat the imperative of “storytelling” as a plastic device: an element of the plot, rather than the backbone.