Oil Change

If you’ve seen a woman with an elegant parasol on the Croisette this week, that’s not just a fashion statement.

She’s Rebecca Tickell , one of the directors of controversial documentary The Big Fix, about the BP oil spill and a vast network of corruption surrounding it. When she was in Louisiana, with her husband and fellow director Josh Tickell, researching the documentary when the contamination there. When she got extremely sick from the contamination. There are stil parts of her skin that can’t be exposed to sunlight. She’s not alone – the filmmakers estimate there are 4 to 5 million people in the spill’s impact zone.

“That was just the beginning,” Josh Tickell says, of their trip to see oil washing up on Louisiana beaches when the government had said everything was cleaned up. “Then we did an investigation in to the real cause [of the disaster and the spin].” The journey takes them to Capitol Hill and the White House.
 
The pair made the movie in 9 months (compared to the average doc incubation of 7 years), independently funding it so there would be no restrictions on content.

They met Peter Fonda when he became a fan of their last film Fuel, about the need for green energy. Actress Amy Smart and musician Jason Mraz also came on board. All of them were down with the filmmaking team in Louisiana to see the disaster for themselves. Now, Tim Robbins has also come on board as an executive producer.
 
The film screens tonight at 8 pm with Mraz and Fonda also in attendance.
 
Josh Tickell paid tribute to Cannes for providing a platform for important social issues. “Cannes is creating a place for these highly controversial and highly politically charged movies,” he said, pointing to past screenings like Lucy Walker’s Countdown To Zero. “The entertainment factor is there, but also we need to have that social commentary.”
 
Bec Smith and Rena Ronson at UTA are selling.