The Road Continues

In 2017 we travelled across the United States making The Hemp Road Trip. Hemp prohibition was still in force. The question was simple:

What could this plant become if it were finally allowed to become an industry?

We met farmers, researchers, builders and entrepreneurs. We saw the possibilities — in agriculture, materials, soil and regional economies.

The film became more than a documentary. It became a conversation.

When we brought it to the screen, people gathered in town halls and started conversations. The film gave people something to imagine together.

Then the conversation kept going without us.

In the UK, people who had seen the film began investigating their own hemp industry. That became Hemp: Eat Build Heal.

Now, almost ten years later, we are bringing the camera to Australia, to follow the story from the ground up.

Farmers are growing it. People are building with it. Researchers are working with it. Communities are asking what a local industry could look like. And even the Senate ran an inquiry on it.

And yet some farmers have thousands of tonnes of hemp sitting in sheds without a reliable Australian buyer.

So what happens between growing a crop and building an industry around it?

That’s the story we want to follow.

The story so far

This time, we follow the crop

We are traveling through Australia to meet the people making hemp work — and the people still waiting for the system around them to catch up.

Farmers. Builders. Processors. Researchers. Entrepreneurs. Regional communities.

We don’t follow one hero.

We follow the crop.

At every stage, we meet the people who make the next connection possible.

We don’t know exactly where the road will lead.

That’s the point.

Here’s a recent stop in Tocumwal, NSW:

Questions on the road

• Can a farmer grow hemp and find a market for it?
• Can processing happen close enough to the farm to create regional industries?
• Can hemp become more than a crop — and become the foundation of a new industry?
• What has actually changed in the ten years since our first film?
• And what still needs to change?

Help us make it

Independent films happen because people decide that a story is worth seeing.

Your contribution helps us put our cameras back on the road, travel to the people doing the work, document what is happening now, and bring those stories back to the screen.

And then we want to do what we did the first time.

Bring the film home.

Because the most exciting part of making a documentary isn’t only filming it.

It’s what happens when people see it together.