Aayas Joshi ’26 films scenes of resilience
The filmmaker and recent Hussman graduate uses care to document the stories of communities reshaped by environmental changes.
Aayas Joshi grew up in Kathmandu, Nepal. But it wasn’t until the Carolina student took a gap-year trip to Mount Everest funded by his Morehead-Cain scholarship that he confronted the climate conundrum in his own backyard.
Many Himalayan communities in Nepal have some of the lowest carbon footprints in the world, often lacking roads, running water and reliable electricity. Yet the Himalayas are warming about three times faster than the global average.
While hiking along Khumbu Glacier near Mount Everest, Joshi spoke with locals increasingly alarmed by how quickly the ice is receding, shifting and flowing. Sections that were once frozen solid have begun forming small glacial lakes, which can burst under pressure and send floodwaters racing downstream. The result can be devastating, wiping out homes, farmland and in some cases entire villages.
“I considered myself a well-educated person living in the capital city,” he says. “But I had no idea how much danger communities were in. That was terrifying.”
Curious about that contrast, Joshi began reaching out to nonprofits and searching for ways to help.
“I realized I cared because I could see it with my own eyes,” he says. “Even if others can’t be there, I can show them.”
Joshi graduated in May with a bachelor’s degree from UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media. At Carolina, he took every opportunity to produce films that explore the tensions and emotions behind deeply rooted environmental issues, from Hurricane Helene to Hawaiian wildfires.
“At the end of the day, these aren’t my projects,” he says. “It’s our project collectively. It’s their story. I am just the medium through which it’s shared with the world.”
Witness to resilience
One of his first projects was a collaboration with fellow student Anna Connors that produced the documentary, “The Last Wild Herd.” In the early 1800s, as many as 60 million buffalo roamed North America. But widespread hunting by western settlers rapidly decimated the herds through 1902, when only 23 bison remained in the Yellowstone area. Today, the Yellowstone herd hovers at 5,000.
“The Last Wild Herd” unpacks that story through the eyes of the nonprofit Buffalo Field Campaign and the Indigenous community around it. The 13-minute film has been shown across four continents and won numerous awards.
“We followed our hearts, and it led us to the film that exists today,” Joshi says.
Just a few months after Joshi released “The Last Wild Herd,” Hurricane Helene smashed into western North Carolina, destroying more than 125,000 homes and killing 106 people, more than in any other state.
Through the weeklong Carolina Photojournalism Workshop, Joshi created “Adrift: Forgiving the Flood” to document the emotional journey of a woman who lost her hand-built tiny house to the river she loved. He’s developing a second film on Hurricane Helene, told through the eyes of a couple who lived along the banks of the South Toe River, which rose 25 feet during the storm.
In 2025, Joshi created a documentary set in Buenos Aires, following musicians who use the underground music scene as a quiet form of resistance against an increasingly authoritarian government. His latest project is a documentary about the Lahaina wildfire on Maui, focused on a young adult who lost her home to the fire.
After graduation, he moved to New York City to continue to tell stories as a freelance documentary filmmaker.
“As a young person, there’s a lot of anxiety about the world we’re building,” he admits. “For a long time, the narrative of doom made me feel paralyzed. But hope keeps me moving. If we, as storytellers, can create hope for even one person, we can build a world young people want to be a part of.”
