Peace Region in the spotlight at VIFF

"We can have snowmobiles or grandchildren, but not both," Charles Wilkinson says, pointing out that making his film, Peace Out, opened his eyes to changes necessary in the world.

Wilkinson says he originally went in to making this film with a strong opinion, but after talking to people on both sides of the issue he soon found out he was very ill informed. Now he's spoken to some of the foremost experts on the subject, and has come away with a much different point of view.

He says that's the goal of the film: to have people become better informed and to elevate the level of discourse. But don't worry about being preached at for over an hour; Wilkinson says he's not an activist and the film's not a guilt trip.

"It's quite a number of really interesting stories. What people choose to do with those is entirely up to them. I don't judge."

After completing the film Wilkinson is now taking steps in his life to strip away wasteful activities, but that doesn't mean he's going to stop driving his motorcycle or change his lifestyle greatly. Instead, he hopes that ordinary people walk away from his film thinking about little changes they can make in their daily routine, like not blow drying their hair every day or switching from an electric razor to a straight blade.

"Regardless of one's stance on environmental issues, I think that we'd all agree that we're incredibly wasteful with energy and if we simply stop doing that… we wouldn't actually need to engage in vast new energy projects because we're making way more than enough energy as it is."

With that being said, Wilkinson has found the building of the Site C dam to be completely unnecessary.

More important than his opinion, Wilkinson says, is the fact that this film has made the festival circuit and that people in the south are interested in what's going on in the north. Peace Out will be playing Tuesday, October 4 at 6 p.m. and Oct. 6 at 3:20 p.m. at Empire Granville 7 Cinemas in Vancouver.

The film will also be making its way to the Peace Region with at least a showing in Dawson Creek. Tentative screening dates are November 4 in Fort St. John, Nov. 5 in Dawson Creek and Nov. 7 in Grande Prairie. Each showing will be followed by a question and answer period with the producer as well as other people and companies shown in the film.

You can watch the trailer here.