Climate-related Movies

Recommended Climate-Related Movies:

Bidder 70 (2012) – 73 minutes
Chasing Ice (2014) – 80 minutes
Disruption (2016) – minutes
Gasland (2010) – 107 minutes
Gasland II (2013) – 125 minutes
How to Let Go of the World and Love All The Things Climate Can’t Change (2016) – 125 minutes
Merchants of Doubt (2014)  – 96 minutes
Sun Come Up (2011) – 38 minutes
The Age of Consequences (2016) – 80 minutes
The Island President (2011) – 101 minutes
This Changes Everything (2015) – 89 minutes

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Bidder 70 (2012) – 73 minutes
http://www.bidder70film.com/
Synopsis: Bidder 70 centers on an extraordinary, ingenious and effective act of civil disobedience demanding government and industry accountability. In 2008, University of Utah economics student Tim DeChristopher committed an act which would redefine patriotism in our time, igniting a spirit of civil disobedience in the name of climate justice. Follow Tim, Bidder 70, from college student to incarcerated felon. Redefine justice for yourself. Choose your side.

Chasing Ice (2014) – 80 minutes
https://chasingice.com/
Synopsis: Chasing Ice is the story of one man’s mission to change the tide of history by gathering undeniable evidence of our changing planet. Within months of his first trip to Iceland, photographer photographer James Balog conceived the boldest expedition of his life: The Extreme Ice Survey. He began deploying revolutionary time-lapse cameras across the brutal Arctic to capture a multi-year record of the world’s changing glaciers. As the debate polarizes America and the intensity of natural disasters ramps up globally, Balog finds himself at the end of his tether. Battling untested technology in subzero conditions, he comes face to face with his own mortality. It takes years for Balog to see the fruits of his labor. His hauntingly beautiful videos compress years into seconds and capture ancient mountains of ice in motion as they disappear at a breathtaking rate. Chasing Ice depicts a photographer trying to deliver evidence and hope to our carbon-powered planet.

Comments: Stunning photography. Moving.

Disruption (2014) – 53 minutes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktgEzXZDtmc
Released on the eve of the People’s Climate March, DISRUPTION tells the story of the greatest crisis mankind has ever faced and the movement rising to fight it. The film weaves together commentary from the most recognized voices analyzing climate, politics and society today with behind-the-scenes footage of the efforts to organize The People’s Climate March – the largest climate rally in history.

Featuring James Hansen, Naomi Oreskes, Van Jones, Bill McKibben, Chris Hayes, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Naomi Klein, Rajendra Pachauri, Justin Gillis, among others – DISRUPTION makes plain the urgency of the present by laying bare the science behind the terrifying tipping points we are threatening to trigger, the failure of our political process to prevent these catastrophes and the need for a popular movement to challenge these realities.

Do the Math (2013) – 45 minutes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuCGVwJIRd0
Based on 350.org’s 2012 Do the Math tour – the math of how much fossil fuel we’ve burned, how much we can still burn and survive, and how much needs to stay in the ground. The film is slightly dated; for instance, it shows carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at 395 parts per million, whereas we’re now over 400 ppm. And it talks about 2012 being the hottest year on record, when of course 2016, 2015 and 2014 now hold first, second, and third place. Those are minor point. The film is powerful and sobering summary of our energy dilemma and its solutions.

Gasland (2010) – 107 minutes
http://www.gaslandthemovie.com/
Synopsis: When Josh Fox receives a $100,000 offer from a natural gas company interested in exploring in his land in Pennsylvania’s Delaware River Basin, he decides to do his own research on drilling and the process known as fracking. Josh sets out to interview those who live near drilling sites, and his findings are frightening — their wells contaminated, residents can actually set their tap water on fire. Visits to sites in Colorado, Wyoming and Texas yield similar horrific findings.

Gasland II (2013) – 125 minutes
http://www.gaslandthemovie.com/
Synopsis: A documentary that declares the gas industry’s portrayal of natural gas as a clean and safe alternative to oil is a myth, and that fracked wells inevitably leak over time, contaminating water and air, hurting families, and endangering the earth’s climate with the potent greenhouse gas methane.

How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can’t Change (2016) – 125 minutes
http://www.howtoletgomovie.com/
Synopsis: In How to Let Go of the World and Love All The Things Climate Can’t Change, Oscar Nominated director Josh Fox (GASLAND) continues in his deeply personal style, investigating climate change – the greatest threat our world has ever known. Traveling to 12 countries on 6 continents, the film acknowledges that it may be too late to stop some of the worst consequences and asks, what is it that climate change can’t destroy? What is so deep within us that no calamity can take it away?

Merchants of Doubt (2014)  – 96 minutes
http://sonyclassics.com/merchantsofdoubt/
Synopsis: Inspired by the acclaimed book by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, MERCHANTS OF DOUBT takes audiences on a satirically comedic, yet illuminating ride into the heart of conjuring American spin. Filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the curtain on a secretive group of highly charismatic, silver- tongued pundits-for-hire who present themselves in the media as scientific authorities – yet have the contrary aim of spreading maximum confusion about well-studied public threats ranging from toxic chemicals to pharmaceuticals to climate change.

Sun Come Up (2011) – 38 minutes
http://redantelopefilms.com/project/sun-come-up/
Synopsis: Sun Come Up is an Academy Award nominated film that shows the human face of climate change. The film follows the relocation of the Carteret Islanders, a community living on a remote island chain in the South Pacific Ocean, and now, some of the world’s first environmental refugees.

When climate change threatens their survival, the islanders face a painful decision. They must leave their ancestral land in search of a new place to call home. Sun Come Up follows a group of young islanders as they search for land and build relationships in war-torn Bougainville, 50 miles across the open ocean.

The Age of Consequences (2016) – 80 minutes
http://theageofconsequences.com/
Synopsis: ‘The Hurt Locker’ meets ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, THE AGE OF CONSEQUENCES investigates the impacts of climate change on increased resource scarcity, migration, and conflict through the lens of US national security and global stability. Through unflinching case-study analysis, distinguished admirals, generals and military veterans take us beyond the headlines of the conflict in Syria, the social unrest of the Arab Spring, the rise of radicalized groups like ISIS, and the European refugee crisis – and lay bare how climate change stressors interact with societal tensions, sparking conflict.

Whether a long-term vulnerability or sudden shock, the film unpacks how water and food shortages, drought, extreme weather, and sea-level rise function as ‘accelerants of instability’ and ‘catalysts for conflict’ in volatile regions of the world. These Pentagon insiders make the compelling case that if we go on with business as usual, the consequences of climate change – waves of refugees, failed states, terrorism – will continue to grow in scale and frequency, with grave implications for peace and security in the 21st century. The film’s unnerving assessment is by no means reason for fatalism – but instead a call to action to rethink how we use and produce energy.

Comments: Very powerful and speaks to a different kind of audience, because it focuses on the views of military and national security experts. So it can reach people who would not be as open to Naomi Klein or Naomi Oreskes, etc.

The Island President (2011) – 101 minutes
http://theislandpresident.com/
Synopsis: The story of President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives. After bringing democracy to the Maldives after thirty years of despotic rule, Nasheed is now faced with an even greater challenge: as one of the most low-lying countries in the world, a rise of three feet in sea level would submerge the 1200 islands of the Maldives enough to make them uninhabitable. The Island President captures Nasheed’s first year of office, culminating in his trip to the Copenhagen Climate Summit in 2009, where the film provides a rare glimpse of the political horse-trading that goes on at such a top-level global assembly. Nasheed is unusually candid about revealing his strategies—leveraging the Maldives’ underdog position as a tiny country, harnessing the power of media, and overcoming deadlocks through an appeal to unity with other developing nations. When hope fades for a written accord to be signed, Nasheed makes a stirring speech which salvages an agreement. Despite the modest size of his country, Mohamed Nasheed has become one of the leading international voices for urgent action on climate change.

Comments: On the depressing side. Addresses climate justice.

This Changes Everything (2015) – 89 minutes
http://thefilm.thischangeseverything.org/
Synopsis: Filmed over 211 shoot days in nine countries and five continents over four years, This Changes Everything is an epic attempt to re-imagine the vast challenge of climate change. Directed by Avi Lewis, and inspired by Naomi Klein’s international non-fiction bestseller This Changes Everything, the film presents seven powerful portraits of communities on the front lines, from Montana’s Powder River Basin to the Alberta Tar Sands, from the coast of South India to Beijing and beyond. Interwoven with these stories of struggle is Klein’s narration, connecting the carbon in the air with the economic system that put it there. Throughout the film, Klein builds to her most controversial and exciting idea: that we can seize the existential crisis of climate change to transform our failed economic system into something radically better.