A climate change movement that shook the world began with a solitary act of defiance as 15-year-old Greta Thunberg sat outside the Swedish parliament with a home-made sign: “School Strike For Climate”. Capturing those early lone protests was documentary filmmaker Nathan Grossman, who heard about the teenager’s demonstration via a Thunberg family friend. Over the next few months, little could have prepared Grossman or indeed Thunberg for the media frenzy that ensued as he continued to film every step of her journey. As Thunberg says in the film, “It’s like being in a dream... a very surreal one.”
Scenes of Thunberg leading protesters and holding powerful global figures to account are inspirational.
Grossman adroitly documents the breakneck speed at which Thunberg ascends from single demonstrator to voice of a global movement. Tender footage of Thunberg writing emotive speeches at home are juxtaposed with images of the global mass Friday school strikes that her words inspired. Elsewhere, powerful real-time scenes of environmental disasters chill, especially as Grossman overlays them with the voice of leaders variously dismissing and deriding Thunberg, including US President Donald Trump. Scenes of Thunberg leading protesters, challenging climate change-deniers and holding powerful global figures to account are inspirational, as is seeing her ceaseless determination to catalyse change.
Yet as Grossman follows Thunberg on her epic sea-voyage across the Atlantic to address the UN’s Climate Summit in New York, the pressure on her young shoulders is starkly observed. “I don’t want to have to do all of this,” she sobs, breaking down. Similar to Davis Guggenheim’s He Named Me Malala, such moments tread an uncomfortable line between accessibility and intrusion, often leaving difficult safeguarding questions.
Frustratingly, this is also very much a one-sided portrait of Thunberg with little in the way of secondary voices. At times, it feels as though you’re merely scrolling through an extended social media profile, rather than getting to the true essence of what makes Thunberg such an important figure.