Excerpt:
Half a million barrels of toxic waste lurking beneath the waves just miles from California’s coastline sounds like the plot of a Hollywood thriller. Yet this environmental catastrophe is real, as documented in the award-winning film Out of Plain Sight, co-directed by journalist Rosanna Xia and filmmaker Daniel Straub.

The documentary follows Xia, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and coastal reporter for the Los Angeles Times, as she investigates a haunting discovery made by University of California, Santa Barbara, professor David Valentine. During a routine research expedition, Valentine’s underwater robot captured images of corroded barrels scattered across the seafloor near Catalina Island — remnants of a massive toxic dumping operation dating back to the post-World War II era.

Rather than presenting a retrospective account of events, the film unfolds in real time. Viewers experience each revelation alongside Xia as she connect the dots between Valentine’s discovery, historical records, and the ongoing health and environmental consequences of the once widely used insecticide DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane).

The documentary illustrates how DDT, although banned in the U.S. in the 1970s, continues to impact marine ecosystems and human health today. “DDT is the original ‘forever chemical’ before that term even existed,” Xia told Mongabay.

Xia’s reporting carries the torch of Rachel Carson, whose 1962 book Silent Spring first drew public attention to the dangers of DDT. “Rereading Silent Spring decades later and seeing how these messages are still concerns and themes we’re living with today was striking,” Xia said.

“The public would not know about this story in the way that we do without Rosanna’s reporting,” Straub told Mongabay. Since Xia first reported the story, the state of California and U.S. Congress have allocated more than $16 million to study DDT.

Out of Plain Sight takes an immersive visual and acoustic journey through coastal ecosystems, research vessels and laboratories that brings viewers directly into the scientific process.

The film “dramatically illustrates both the importance and process of science and journalism, at a time when both are under attack,” Andy Howell, a staff scientist at Las Cumbres Observatory and a professor at UCSB, said in a review of the documentary for Film Threat.

Straub, a director with more than a decade of experience in documentary filmmaking, brings a cinematic eye to this environmental investigation. The film’s visuals of redwood forests, ocean vistas and coastal landscapes aren’t merely aesthetic choices. They establish the high stakes of what we stand to lose through environmental neglect.

“This is a tragic story, but it’s tragic because the environment where the story takes place is so beautiful,” Straub said. “Being able to show these redwood forests, the ocean, or the cliffs near Big Sur, and present them as beautiful places was important to understand the stakes: this is what we stand to lose…”