Emptying the Skies

Duration: 78 min
Release date: 2015-04-22
IMDB

If you want to impress your dining companions in Cyprus, it's not caviar that you order, but ambelopoulia: a tiny songbird. But as this gripping doc reveals, the cost to bring such delicacies to the table is enormous. Bestselling novelist Jonathan Franzen takes a break from the world of fiction to guide us through an all too horrifying reality: tens of millions of protected migratory songbirds are illegally killed every year. Franzen, a longtime bird lover, accompanies young staffers of the Committee Against Bird Slaughter on their expeditions. With police enforcement in Southern Europe practically non-existent, they risk their lives to rescue trapped birds, and confront hostile poachers. It's a topic that proves a cultural flashpoint -- the Cypriot landowners cannot understand why a bunch of Italians can tell them what to do on their land.

Documentary

Emptying the Skies

Videos

Emptying the Skies

Watch Providers

Fandango at Home Free
Tubi TV

Crew arrow_drop_down

Recomendation Films

  • All That Breathes
  • Naqoyqatsi
  • Finders Keepers
  • Powaqqatsi
  • Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God
  • McQueen
  • Fuck
  • Birth of the Living Dead
  • One Soldier's Story: The Journey of American Sniper
  • Anna Nicole Smith: You Don't Know Me
  • Elstree 1976
  • Love, Antosha
  • Evil Influencer: The Jodi Hildebrandt Story
  • Sidney
  • Con Mum
  • Public Speaking
  • One of Us
  • Heart of a Dog
  • John Candy: I Like Me
  • Cameraperson

NextFilm 2026