In her signature serious-yet-quirky connect-the-dots style, Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Judith Helfand takes audiences from the deadly 199 Chicago heat disaster deep into one of our nation’s biggest growth industries – Disaster Preparedness. Along the way she forges inextricable links between extreme weather, extreme disparity and the politics of ‘disaster’; daring to ask: How can we ignore the fact that a zip code can be a life-or-death sentence? Inspired by Eric Klinenberg’s ground-breaking book HEAT WAVE: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago.

Produced by Kartemquin Films in association with Principle Pictures.

AWARDS:

Best Feature Film Jury Prize
EARTHXFILM
2019

People’s Choice Award
ENVIRONMENTAL FILM FESTIVAL AT YALE
2019

Director/Producer: Judith Helfand
Producer: Fenell Doremus
Editors: Simeon Hutner, David E. Simpson
Executive Producers: Sandra Itkoff, Eric Klinenberg, Justine Nagan, Gordon Quinn, Betsy Steinberg, Sally Jo Fifer, Lois Vossen, Barbara Dobkin, Diana Barrett, Julie Parker Benello, Lynne Rosenthal, Abigail E. Disney, Gini Reticker, Sarah Cavanaugh, Geralyn Dreyfous, Brenda Robinson
Co-Producer and Editor: David Cohen
Supervising Producer: David Eisenberg
Senior Editorial Consultant: Lewis F. Erskine
Consulting Producers: Faye Lederman, Beth Levison, Beth Murphy, Bonnie Cohen, Tia Lessin, Wendy Ettinger