REVIEW: Trapped (Madeleine Engel, Joe Purtell, 2025)

Told through the voices of a North Carolina community, “Trapped” reveals how the protection of the Venus flytrap has become a tool of institutional power that overlooks the land’s economic and historical realities. While large corporations tear through entire ecosystems without consequence, the people who’ve relied on this plant for generations now risk years in prison just to survive.

The film asks us to sit with difficult questions: What does it mean to save a species if, in the process, we strip away the dignity of those who live alongside it? What happens when environmental laws deepen inequality instead of easing it? Who has the right to decide what counts as “protection”--those living on the land, or those writing the laws? And how many policies, wrapped in the language of care, are actually leaving the most vulnerable behind?

With thoughtful storytelling and beautiful  cinematography, Trapped shows how a conservation law has left an entire Black community caught between poverty and criminalization. While developers build freely over protected habitats, families who’ve coexisted with this plant for decades are forced to choose between precarious jobs or the risk of the illegal market.

We were honored to include this powerful film in our most recent selection at Ecos Shorts Festival, as part of our Human Rights edition. Trapped reminds us that there’s no true environmental justice without social justice -and places a necessary spotlight on institutional racism and the contradictions behind what we call “progress.”