Victoria-raised filmmaker puts man's battle with pharmaceutical company in the spotlight

Acclaimed Victoria-raised filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal's latest documentary calls into question the safety of a widely used herbicide.

The documentary Into the Weeds: Dewayne "Lee" Johnson vs. Monsanto Company covers the trial of groundskeeper Dwayne "Lee" Johnson against agri-chemical giant Monsanto, which was bought by pharmaceutical company Bayer in 2018, and produces a weed killer known as Roundup.

Johnson claims he developed cancer after he was exposed to Roundup and went to court against Monsanto in 2018.

The film also features other players rallying against the use of the herbicide including a farmer, an Indigenous elder and other plaintiffs who claim to have been harmed.

Baichwal is excited to attend a screening of her latest film at Cinecenta in Victoria this Sunday.

"It’s a friends and family screening, so there will be a lot of people I know, which I love," Baichwal said Thursday morning over Zoom from her home in Toronto.

The acclaimed filmmaker said after spending a solitary year editing the film during the pandemic, she looks forward to hearing from the audience.

"What I love is the immediate reaction of an audience and that’s positive and negative, I like the critique," she said.

Documentary filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal is pictured. (Submitted)

Baichwal is known for directing or co-directing 10 other documentaries, such as Anthropocene: The Human Epoch in 2018, Manufactured Landscapes in 2006, and Let It Come Down in 1998.

Her work largely examines how strained the relationship with the natural world and humans can be.

The documentary director says she hopes her work can awaken audiences and make the world a better place.

"The more we know about things like this, it allows us to learn and then we advocate," she said.

"Documentaries are a very powerful tool for both of those things because it can engage you intellectually, emotionally and viscerally rather than just a little social media post."