By Courtney Mattison
A new documentary is making a splash at film festivals around the country and it’s heading to California. Angel Azul – a feature length environmental documentary from Passelande Pictures directed by Marcelina Cravat – explores the plight of Caribbean coral reefs through the work of renowned sculptor and reef conservationist Jason deCaires Taylor.

Angel Azul takes viewers from Taylor’s dry, cavernous concrete sculpture studio 20 minutes down the coast from Cancun to the warm azure waters offshore, where the artist has installed hundreds of life-size statues in the seafloor to serve as artificial reefs that aggregate fish and provide safe spots on which baby corals can settle and grow. Taylor’s hauntingly beautiful works also draw tourists away from the natural reefs nearby, which are struggling to survive the panoply of threats imposed by climate change, disease, nutrient pollution and other human-caused impacts.…