Merging fiction and documentary, Sinkholes is a dystopian vision of a future world in which humanity survives in an environment in which water has become scarce and the sea is slowly receding behind dunes of salt. It tells the story of the inhabitants of a desolate coastline, trapped between a desertified interior and an unnamed coast. Following, the first-person voiceover of its protagonist Lawrence, the story unfolds through a sequence of striking documentary scenes, shot in inland and coastal Israel and Palestine. While the landscapes and sites Russo has gathered are real – places of rusting industry, of abandoned habitation and the bizarre, almost extraterrestrial salt formations of the Dead Sea – the narration transforms these into the ruins of an entire society, doomed to a world in which it has ceased to rain. Following Lawrence in his attempt to make a final journey from the salt-drowned shores of his human settlement to a hoped-for source of fresh water inland, Sinkholes imagines a moment in which time has come to a standstill, where technology and society has devolved to simpler forms, and in which the planet itself has regressed to inorganic and mineralogical processes. Threading together references to a history of artists fascinated by the ideas of entropy and the inhuman – from JG Ballard to Robert Smithson – Sinkholes it is a disturbing and visually haunting mediation on what makes us human; on our desire both for survival and resignation in the face of the possibility of extinction.

Five gigantic sinkholes have recently been discovered on a remote plateau on the other side of the world. A team of experts has made the trip to descend into the depths. Among them is professor Georges Lebrun, who has come with his wife.

2013年2月，在佛罗里达州坦帕市，一个巨大的天坑在杰弗里·布什（Jeffrey Bush）卧室的地板下突然出现，正在熟睡的36岁的他被天坑吞噬，遗体始终未被找到。布什是一场天坑灾难的受害者。天坑是一种日益严重的全球性灾害，只要土壤下面有石灰岩和其他水溶性岩石，就可能存在天坑隐患。当空气中的二氧化碳溶解在雨水中时，会形成一种微弱的……