Memoirs of a Plague‘s opening sequence harks of end of days, but it soon becomes apparent that filmmaker Robert Nugent’s relationship – and indeed humankind’s relationship – with locusts is a great deal more complicated. Nugent almost serenades the insects with sweepingly cinematic, orchestral montages, presenting a creature that can fascinate and repulse in equal measure. Biblical tropes of the harvest and the rains are updated and experienced anew in two countries worlds apart, Australia and Ethiopia. Farmers and their communities in both locations are battling with the locusts, praying to science to support the fight. But like a swarm of locusts across the sun, the outcome is anything but clear.