Home, the environmental film from French film-maker Yann Arthus-Bertrand, will be launched across multi-platforms in 127 countries on June 5, in what it is claimed will be the biggest day and date film release.

The $12m film will be released across theatres, TV, online and DVD to coincide with World Environment Day. It will be screened on the National Geographic in the US on Friday evening.

Produced by Luc Besson’s EuropaCorp, Home uses aerial photography shot in 53 countries with commentary on the affect of human consumption on the natural world.

Speaking in Athens, one of the five cities to host an international launch of the film, Arthus-Bertrand said he had secured finance from a range of sources including luxury goods company PPR, owner of Gucci, and powerful French industrialist Francois-Henri Pinot.

He added Pinot had contributed “probably because he is feeling guilty for the pollution caused by his factories”.

But he was keen to stress that “Pinot never interfered in the shooting or tried to exercise any censorship on the content”.

The day and date international release aims to increase the universal awareness of the devastating effects of human intervention in nature. The strategy is only possible after exhibitors in all territories were convinced to accept the simultaneous release as positive benefit to the environmental cause.

Feelgood, a new film and home video distribution company (BBC, Sony and Universal) handles the film in Greece.

Irene Souganidou, the company’s chief, convinced 17 exhibitors to premiere the film despite the multi-platform release by slashing the distributor’s percentage on admissions to an unprecedented 35% down from the normal 60%.

Proceeds from the world launch will go, after production costs are covered, to the GoodPlanet organisation run by Arthus-Bertrand. The film follows the worldwide success and interest in Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, which examined the facts behind envrionmental damage. It was released in 2006.

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