{"id":958839,"date":"2026-07-25T18:39:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T18:39:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/958839\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T18:39:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T18:39:14","slug":"the-climate-crisis-onscreen-14-films-that-made-waves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/958839\/","title":{"rendered":"The climate crisis onscreen: 14 films that made waves"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article<\/a> was produced by Capital & Main. It is published here with permission.<\/p>\n

The most honest conversations America has about climate change don\u2019t happen in Washington. Sometimes they happen in the darkness of a movie theater or living room.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A year after\u00a0An Inconvenient Truth\u00a0hit theaters in 2006, a\u00a0Gallup Poll recorded<\/a>\u00a0what up to that point was the highest recorded percentage of people to express concern about the climate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since its release six years later,\u00a0Chasing Ice\u00a0has screened in more than 172 countries, has reached 15 million broadcast viewers and has produced measurable shifts in their concern and attitudes, the\u00a0film\u2019s producers have said<\/a>. And in 2016,\u00a0Before the Floodbecame the\u00a0most-watched National Geographic film<\/a>\u00a0ever. These documentaries did their job. Not only did they inform viewers, they also moved people.<\/p>\n

But so too have feature films.\u00a0The Day After Tomorrow\u00a0\u2014 a movie openly ridiculed for its preposterous science \u2014 turns out to have been one of the most effective climate communication vehicles ever produced. A\u00a0Yale University study<\/a>\u00a0found it had a significant effect on risk perceptions, behavioral intentions, policy priorities and even voting intentions of moviegoers. Of moviegoers surveyed, 83% said they were somewhat or very concerned about global warming, compared to 72% of nonwatchers. It wasn\u2019t the science that viewers were responding to, but a tidal wave deluging Manhattan.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Decades earlier, six-time Oscar-winning filmmaker Frank Capra, a conservative Republican, in his 1958 Bell System Science Series television special\u00a0The Unchained Goddess\u00a0issued one of the earliest televised warnings about carbon dioxide, global warming and rising seas.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The message is as relevant as ever today as the administration of President Donald Trump works to weaken or erase rules aimed at reducing all manner of climate pollution through\u00a0hundreds of deregulatory actions<\/a>\u00a0that are\u00a0happening faster<\/a>\u00a0than in his first term, according to Columbia Law School\u2019s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.<\/p>\n

But filmmakers haven\u2019t shied away from the climate crisis, with dozens of environmentally themed films set to be released by year\u2019s end. Among the most noteworthy are\u00a0Sara Dosa\u2019s poetic\u00a0Time and Water<\/a>; Abby Ellis\u2019 environmental political thriller\u00a0The Lake,\u00a0which tracks the toxic depletion of the Great Salt Lake; Yorgos Avgeropoulos\u2019 devastating Arctic expos\u00e9\u00a0Mankind\u2019s Folly; and Thomas Vinterberg\u2019s near-future climate refugee TV miniseries\u00a0Families Like Ours.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here are 14 of the most meaningful climate documentaries and feature films of the last three decades and where you can watch them.<\/p>\n

DOCUMENTARIES<\/strong><\/p>\n

An Inconvenient Truth<\/strong>\u00a0(2006) Davis Guggenheim and Al Gore\u2019s documentary is the gold standard for measurable impact and the first mainstream climate documentary. A year after its release (and in the year it won an Oscar), a Gallup Poll found that 41% of Americans said they worried \u201ca great deal\u201d about climate change \u2014 a new record at the time. Research confirmed that it increased knowledge, concern and willingness to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.\u00a0Rent or buy on Prime Video, Apple TV, Fandango.<\/p>\n

Before the Flood<\/strong>\u00a0(2016) surpassed a billion minutes of viewing time, a record for a National Geographic documentary, according to the company. Watching it now though is a bit depressing because the climate change issues addressed in the film haven\u2019t changed much. Reach over measurable behavior change.\u00a0Disney+, Apple TV.<\/p>\n

Chasing Ice<\/strong>\u00a0(2012) It screened in 172 countries and reached 15 million broadcast viewers,\u00a0post-screening surveys<\/a>\u00a0showed a significant shift in concern and desire to adjust personal behavior. Its impact campaign was honored with the Doc Impact Hi5 award for excellence in filmmaking and created significant effects \u2014 from inspiring politicians to pass relevant legislation to mobilizing voters and empowering youth activists.\u00a0Rent or buy on Prime Video, Apple TV, YouTube.<\/p>\n

Chasing Coral<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>(2017) Also recognized with the Doc Impact Hi5 award for measurable social impact, the second\u00a0Chasing\u00a0documentary was used by communities worldwide to grow local solutions. Its greatest contribution may be making an invisible crisis visible \u2014 reef bleaching had no public imagery before this film gave it one.\u00a0Netflix.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I Am Greta (<\/strong>2020) Once 15-year-old Greta Thunberg burst onto the scene in 2018 and inspired a youth-led global movement to fight climate change, powerful forces were quick to claim she was a puppet of adults. What they didn\u2019t know was that filmmaker Nathan Grossman was following her the whole time, from filming her first protest sitting alone cross-legged outside the Swedish Parliament to writing her own speeches to pushing back against anyone who dared to challenge her. Thunberg\u2019s journey from a Stockholm sidewalk to the United Nations stage is the kind of story that sounds invented. This film proves it wasn\u2019t.\u00a0Hulu.<\/p>\n

The Territory<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>(2022) This film was explicitly conceived as the beginning of an\u00a0Indigenous-led campaign<\/a>\u00a0to fight Amazon deforestation, not the end of one. And by that measure, it delivered. After the film won an Emmy and amplified international pressure, there was a\u00a0\u00a0reduction in deforestation and occupation<\/a>\u00a0of the Uru-eu-wau-wau territory in the Amazon rainforest of Brazil, and both Indigenous leaders and government officials reported feeling safer on the ground. The land grabbers haven\u2019t stopped. But neither has the resistance.\u00a0Disney+.<\/p>\n

Time and Water<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>(2026) Icelandic writer Andri Sn\u00e6r Magnason turned to his family archives to chronicle what is being lost\u00a0 \u2014 not just the glaciers his grandparents honeymooned on, but the memories, the stories, the whole living archive of a people tied to ice for seven centuries.\u00a0<\/strong>Director Sara Dosa, who gave us\u00a0Fire of Love\u00a0four years earlier,\u00a0documents this moving act poetically and does what only the best climate films manage \u2014\u00a0she makes the ice personal<\/a>.\u00a0Coming to Disney+ and National Geographic later this year.<\/p>\n

FEATURES<\/strong><\/p>\n

Princess Mononoke<\/strong>\u00a0(1997) Hayao Miyazaki made his environmental argument in this animated masterpiece nearly 30 years ago, and it has never stopped being right. Set in feudal Japan, the film pits industrialization against the forest gods with enough moral complexity that neither side wins. No easy resolution.\u00a0HBO Max.<\/p>\n

WALL-E<\/strong>\u00a0(2008) Nominated for six Academy Awards and winner of the Oscar for best animated feature, this Disney-Pixar film follows a solitary robot named\u00a0WALL-E who scours an uninhabitable, deserted Earth in 2805 cleaning up garbage. The film grossed more than $520 million worldwide, and has helped children get an environmental lesson disguised as excellent entertainment.\u00a0Disney+.<\/p>\n

Beasts of the Southern Wild<\/strong>\u00a0(2012) Benh Zeitlin\u2019s evocative debut feature won the Grand Jury Prize, Dramatic, at the Sundance Film Festival and the Cam\u00e9ra d\u2019Or at the Festival de Cannes and garnered four Oscar nominations. More importantly, it portrayed climate change through the face of a 6-year-old girl, and in Quvenzhan\u00e9 Wallis\u2019 unforgettable performance, made rising waters personal. Scholars at Harvard University\u2019s Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment have used it as a\u00a0teaching tool<\/a>\u00a0specifically because it illustrates the interconnectedness of climate justice and racial justice in ways data cannot.\u00a0Hulu and HBO Max.<\/p>\n

Interstellar<\/strong>\u00a0(2014) Christopher Nolan\u2019s space epic earns its place solely for its opening act, which is as good as climate filmmaking gets: a dying Earth, dust storms swallowing farms, civilization accepting its own extinction. Nolan never calls it climate change. And he doesn\u2019t have to.\u00a0Paramount+.<\/p>\n

Okja<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>(2017) Bong Joon Ho\u2019s moral fable about industrial meat production \u2014 corporate greed, slaughterhouse horror, the environmental cost of feeding the world\u2019s appetite for meat \u2014 lands all of it through the eyes of a young girl and her genetically engineered super-pig. Google searches for \u201cvegan\u201d\u00a0spiked 65% after its release<\/a>, according to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Ho\u00a0went vegan during filming<\/a>, too, though it didn\u2019t last \u2014 he\u2019s now mostly pescatarian \u2014 which is either an apt metaphor for how hard real change is or proof that making the film is more radicalizing than watching it.\u00a0Netflix.<\/p>\n

First Reformed<\/strong>\u00a0(2017)\u00a0Paul Schrader\u2019s searing portrait of a minister (played by Ethan Hawke at his best) whose faith collapses under the weight of ecological despair is one of the most psychologically precise films ever made about climate grief. No tidal waves. No melting glaciers. Just a man coming apart.\u00a0Netflix.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t Look Up<\/strong>\u00a0(2021) Adam McKay\u2019s dark comedy unfortunately left audiences more cynical about powerful forces blocking climate action than galvanized about enacting change. (Disclosure: McKay is a member of Capital & Main\u2019s\u00a0advisory board<\/a>.) With splashy Netflix promotion, this generation\u2019s\u00a0Dr. Strangelove\u00a0at least brought an issue that had started to fade back into the light.\u00a0Netflix.<\/p>\n

Capital & Main<\/a> is an award-winning nonprofit publication that reports from California on the most pressing economic, environmental and social issues of our time, including economic inequality, climate change, health care, threats to democracy, hate and extremism and immigration.\u200b<\/p>\n

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