The INFO Project Blog

Director Michael Tobias juxtaposes the quiet order of Holland with Mumbai’s teaming streets in a film from California-based Population Communication called No Vacancy that pleads for a reinvigoration of family planning programs worldwide.

With Robert Gillespie’s narration, Tobias’s film begins in Europe praising locals’ “wise decisions” to have small families. Gillespie interviews officials in Holland that point out that their country, with its frank discussion on sexuality and contraception, has the lowest abortion rates and teenage pregnancy in the world. An average of 1.66 children are born per woman.

The film crew roams from Holland, to quiet one-baby-per-woman Italy, to India, where the fertility rate hovers just under 3. Here, the streets appear narrow and children and babies are everywhere. Gillespie towers above the women he interviews like “Shack” O’Neil, but he seems unfazed, interviewing family planning pracitioners and program managers, as well as activists like outspoken Times of India reporter Menakshee Shedde.

The fast-paced editing and swirl of colors make the film seem incredibly current, like an MTV reality show, but the issues, sadly, are many of the same that population activists have been working towards progress on since the Population Bomb era. Nearly forty years later, we are 6.4 billion people struggling to make room for 3 or 6 more billion by 2050.