A Plastic Ocean filmmaker Craig Leeson on what drives him to ‘change the world’ through impact films

I studied English literature, law and economics, and wanted to be a lawyer. I liked debate and the written word and found great knowledge in books.

In 1983, the surf boat crew I was rowing with as a surf lifesaver was doing well. We were offered a position with a surf club on the Gold Coast in Queensland to compete with them professionally. We got pretty excited about it.

I told my parents it was what I wanted to do. We had a conversation about how long I could sustain that and what would happen after I turned 30 and my knees had blown out.

In the news

My father was the chief of staff of the local newspaper, The Advocate. My grandfather, who died before I was born, had been the paper’s editor. I started there as a copy person and then got a cadetship, which back in the day was how you learned the trade.

The money was pretty good, and it meant I could continue training with the Burnie Surf Club and competing all over Australia in interstate carnivals.

Why watching The Cove was life changing for one Hong Kong marine biologist

In 1989, I moved to Hobart to work for the national broadcaster ABC Radio on its industrial and political desk – that’s when I stopped surf life-saving and focused on my professional career.

After two years in radio, I got into television and became a reporter for ABC News and was a weekend news anchor.

Handling the handover

I travelled around China in 1992 and became fascinated by the country. I had quite a few friends in Hong Kong and stopped off there on the way back to Australia. I struck up a friendship with the bureau chief of Time Magazine, John Colmey, and we stayed in touch.

I began to get itchy feet and moved to Hong Kong in March 1996, and got a job as an on-air reporter on a current affairs programme called Inside Story, which was run by Asia Television, based in Hong Kong.

There, I did stories on important issues across the region, from Anwar Ibrahim in Malaysia to the death of Deng Xiaoping in China, and I started to understand the political scene in Hong Kong and what the issues were before the handover.

Conquering fear

I worked in Hong Kong until 1999 and then moved to Indonesia and covered the fall of Suharto. That got pretty feisty and I lost a few friends during the war in East Timor.

After two years I decided it was time to leave. I wanted to develop skills in other areas, so I moved to Miami to clear my head and do something different.

I have a fear of heights and wanted to conquer that, so I learned how to fly. Interestingly, sitting in an aircraft surrounded by tin, focusing on the task at hand, I didn’t have that fear.

After flying for two years on a private licence I realised it wasn’t something I wanted to do career-wise.

I was also doing some freelance journalism and got a call from National Geographic asking if I’d be interested in helping them set up the new Asia channel in Hong Kong.

I returned to Hong Kong in 2002 to produce and direct National Geographic Asia’s documentary series, Watch Asia.

Man of mystery

I enjoyed making documentaries. John Colmey, who by then was a strategic adviser to Richard Li as he was completing a takeover of Hong Kong Telecom, got me on board as a media strategist to help them navigate the meetings with the Telstra executives.

After 18 months, in 2005, I set up my own production company – Ocean Vista Films, named after where I grew up – and started with a documentary for the National Geographic channel called Marco Polo: Mystery of the Middle Kingdom.

It was a two-year project and we had central government approval to visit the entire country to prove one way or the other the academic debate about whether he was really in China when he wrote his book as there were many scholars who believed he just sat in a hotel room in Istanbul and spoke to traders coming out of China.

Great harm

Running my own production company was fulfilling but also scary and very much a hand-to-mouth existence. We did a lot of corporate films as well and worked with governments, banks and did in-house videos for Shanghai Tang.

Climate change and steak don’t mix: why owners shut Blue Butcher in Hong Kong

I made a lot of mistakes, but ultimately that provided the backbone for when I wanted to step onto an international arena and produce high-quality films.

We were telling people that not only was it terrible for the environment, but that it has the potential to cause great harm to us and our children, and is already causing great harm to animals.

Deep impact

The film started out looking at the damage plastics were causing to the oceans but when we became aware this stuff was getting in the food chain we realised there was a bigger story.

Plastics weren’t just a problem for the oceans, but a problem for humans.

I thought we had a great film, but I didn’t expect people to pick up on the issue as much as they did. I get asked to talk about this a lot with governments and corporations around the world.

Change makers

Two years ago, someone sent me statistics that show 157 countries have implemented a ban, taxation, levy or regulations supporting limitations on single-use plastics – which was fantastic to see.

It wasn’t just because of the film, but certainly we helped drive a lot of that change and create that awareness in concert with scientists and NGOs, who were campaigning heavily by then.

As a documentary filmmaker, that’s what drives me – being able to see that you have a voice and can make change.

Extreme lessons

We wanted people to watch the film who weren’t scientists or people who understood the climate conundrum but wanted to know more about it, so we kept the element of extreme sports to create the drama and adventure but told through the lens of these disappearing glaciers.

We couldn’t get anyone to fund it because it was such a divisive issue, so we funded it ourselves.

We released a 40-minute educational version of the film on IMAX in 2022 and plan to have the long cinematic version – The Last Glaciers: Journey to the Extreme – in the public domain by the end of the year.

These films are amazing for creating awareness, but I’d like to move that awareness into solutions, so I’ve been busy building a company in Australia called Cooee that I hope will do that.

We aim to help people become aware of the products that they buy and become smarter consumers.

Worthy partners

My partner is called Valentina Bruccoleri. We met in Paris when I was making an art film for a French gallery and she was doing her PhD in art history, which she has now completed. She can read and write seven languages and is also a respected flamenco dancer.

We recently moved to Portugal and are setting up a European base in Lisbon. I spend three months of the year in Australia for my business, which means I get to spend time with my parents in Tasmania.

Lisbon food crawl: the Portuguese capital’s 7 best restaurants and bars

Lisbon has become my home base – that’s where my couch is – but most of my time is spent travelling between countries giving speeches, doing screenings.

The travel is constant, but it’s part of a lifestyle. Once you make these films, the work doesn’t stop with them, people become interested in the issue and seek further knowledge on it, so I get invited to conferences around the world.

Everybody wants these documentaries, but very few people are willing to do their part in terms of helping out where we need it most, with the funding.

We really need to get investors who see the issue as worthy of putting money into changing awareness – people who want to change the planet who maybe want to align their company with the ethos of the film and see value in it, these are the kind of people we look forward to partnering with.