The Chances of the World Changing: For the Love of Turtles: One Man Risks it All

A man is eating at a restaurant in New York's Chinatown when he sees a turtle-- a diamondback terrapin swimming in a tank, waiting to meet its fate. He buys and takes her home, naming her The Empress-- and just like that, life as he knows it begins to spiral out of control.

This was over 10 years ago, and the Empress was just the first of over a thousand turtles he would house in his large Manhattan loft in an effort to preserve many different species threatened to become extinct.

The Chances of the World Changing is a moving story: writer Richard Ogust had an epiphany that cost him not only money, but time, effort and his mental health. The documentary was filmed over a period of his life where everything was appearing to come apart at the seams.

It shows us how he came to rescue more than 1,200 endangered turtles and is a riveting and sentimental look at the price of a dream and how far one is able to go while facing the risk of it unraveling.

Watching him struggle, we want to see him make it work and build the largest colony of endangered turtles in the world. But as his attempts to do so keep meeting terrible results, you wonder why he let this take over so much of his life. He was, after all, working on the writing project that was vital to his career-- the culmination of his life's work, and he stopped in the middle of it to help these slow-moving, curious creatures.

It's heartbreaking to watch a lonely guy on his cell phone fight the environmental protection agency over concerns of how he cares for the animals, which is pretty well considering he is only one man. To say Ogust is overwhelmed would be an understatement.

After a melancholy intro by director Eric Daniel Metzgar, Ogust begins by describing how people like him sometimes end up: "At some point we can no longer hold onto and maintain our collections." Booted from his apartment, he has plans to create an institute on a farm in New Jersey.

He yearns to make a difference, and he and his group of fellow preservationists feel strongly about the way these animals are harvested for soup overseas (China seems to be the worst culprit.) It appears to be a passion that Ogust has sacrificed everything for, at one point leaving him pitching a tent in a cornfield next to a warehouse when funding falls through.

He paid big money to divert shipments that were headed to the Southeast Asian food markets. In one of the many sad scenes where the soft-spoken writer laments his journey, he is removing turtles from the freezer that have died due to either sickness or what he refers to as his own "stupidity." It is here that we understand the simplicity behind the chaotic endeavor he has undertaken: he really cares about the plight of these animals.

We get a shocking glimpse of what these turtles go through once they are being prepared for their demise-it is not a sight for the squeamish. Fascinating though his project was, Ogust is obviously exhausted and at one point admits he is severely depressed, especially in the mornings.

In a touching moment, a turtle tries to poke its head through a fence and finally succeeds, giving you the sense that it knows the struggle behind keeping it alive and that the battle hasn't yet been won.

The camera angles are intimate, and as we watch Ogust sadly slide into despair there are numerous close-ups on him and the reptiles. Both seem to be reluctantly accepting the possibility that not even passion, the world's leading turtle experts or their enthusiasm may be able to change their world.