Were you to cut the skin of Stan Rennie, his blood would run with the distinct perfume of the Teesside fishing community of which he has been a part for the majority of his life. He lands lobsters, crabs and prawns and though this hasn’t led to vast riches, he has lived a comfortable life, continuing a timeworn tradition that is an essential part of the industry and culture of northeast England.
In 2023, Rennie found that his nets and cages were coming up empty and the beaches were strewn with dead and mouldering crustaceans. His livelihood was suddenly in peril, and filmmaker Jeanie Finlay empathetically captures his efforts to try to work out what’s happening. The moustache- twirling villain of the piece is Tory Teesside mayor, Ben Houchen, whose unwavering commitment to creating a freeport to serve the post-Brexit economic landscape has potentially led to the uncovering of deep-sea toxic materials that are in turn wiping out all sea life.
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All Rivers Spill Their Stories to the Sea charts and celebrates the mouse that roared, as Stan – despite his lowly station and worsening physical ailments – decides he needs to cause a stink about all this. What’s particularly affecting about the piece as a whole is that Finlay doesn’t try to manipulate the material to make it look like one side has conquered the other, instead just capturing and explaining the endless bureaucratic vortex that these instances inevitably lead to, especially when big capital is involved.