Our planet’s economic and environmental future hangs on an unlikely thread: the clothesline. British filmmaker Steven Lake criss-crosses the world to unravel the reasons and consequences for banishing the clotheslines in favour of tumble dryers. 

Corporate America sold the world an electric dream, replacing simple centuries-old outdoors line-drying with the electricity-hungry dryer. As a consequence, the demand for coal, and energy consumption across the globe has rapidly increased. To make matters more complex the developing nations are also starting a love affair with the electric utopia, exponentially increasing the demands on an already threatened environment.

From the laundry-less gardens of sunny California to India’s communal open air Laundromats, DRYING FOR FREEDOM is a voyage into the new environmental battlefield where money, status and class come first and our planet is a poor second.