Last night, Big Picture Ranch’s critically acclaimed feature documentary COMMON GROUND–directed and produced by award-winning filmmakers Joshua Tickell and Rebecca Harrell Tickell (Oscar® shortlist for “Fuel” Official Selection Cannes Film Festival for “The Big Fix”)–won the Environmental Media Association Award for Best Documentary Film presented by Jane Fonda at its Los Angeles awards gala celebrating excellence in environmental storytelling.
The film’s narrator, Laura Dern, was also honored with the EMA Ongoing Commitment Award for her advocacy at the 33rd annual event hosted by Lance Bass, Cheri Oteri, and Melissa Peterman, and featuring a special performance by Sheryl Crow.
The multi award-winning COMMON GROUND is among the top 10 highest-grossing independent limited release documentaries of 2023. Earlier this month, the theatrically released feature film earned the 2024 Palm Springs International Film Festival’s Best Documentary Feature Audience Award. It is also the winner of several awards and honors including the 2023 Tribeca Festival’s Human/Nature Award, where it also made its world premiere.
Presented by Big Picture Ranch and Area 23A, COMMON GROUND first opened in select theaters on September 29, 2023 and has played on over 200 screens nationwide to date. By popular demand, the independently produced documentary continues to show in theaters across the country with bookings in over 25 markets through Q1 2024 and growing. Upcoming markets include San Antonio, Sacramento, Santa Fe, Indianapolis, Phoenix, San Francisco, Raleigh and Tallahassee.
Narrated by Laura Dern, Jason Momoa, Rosario Dawson, Ian Somerhalder, Woody Harrelson and Donald Glover, and directed and produced by Joshua Tickell and Rebecca Harrell Tickell, COMMON GROUND fuses journalistic expose with deeply personal stories from those on the front lines of the food movement. It unveils a dark web of money, power, and politics behind our broken food system, revealing how unjust practices forged our current farm system in which farmers of all colors are literally dying to feed us. The documentary profiles a hopeful and uplifting movement of white, black, and indigenous farmers who are using alternative “regenerative” models of agriculture that could balance the climate, save our health, and stabilize America’s economy—before it’s too late.
COMMON GROUND is the highly anticipated documentary sequel to the juggernaut success, “Kiss the Ground,” which touched over 1 billion people globally and inspired the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to put $20 billion toward soil health to save our planet from climate change. Like its predecessor, the new film is a rallying cry for revamping the world’s farming system by inspiring collective action and offering practical solutions that are paramount for healing our food systems, people, and the planet.
For more information and to find cities where COMMON GROUND is currently playing nationwide, please visit CommonGroundFilm.org.
