At the southern tip of Texas, surrounded by pristine wetlands, lies Boca Chica. In 2018, Elon Musk chose this coastal town as SpaceX’s new base: today the area is dominated by towering Starships, dozens of stories high, ready to be launched into space. In this context, Julien Elie observes ongoing social and environmental transformations. The historic community is gradually giving way to space junkies dreaming of Mars, while flora and fauna undergo increasingly rapid changes. Shifting Baselines questions the ambition of progress and its consequences for the future of both Earth and the sky, drawing on the concept of shifting baseline syndrome, which describes how each generation tends to consider an already degraded environment as «normal», gradually losing memory of previous ecological conditions.

Julien Elie is a Canadian documentary filmmaker whose work focuses on human and environmental rights. After Dark Suns (2018) and La Guardia Blanca (2023), Shifting Baselines has been presented at major documentary festivals worldwide, receiving several awards.