Fight For The Future
AN INCONVENIENT SEQUEL: TRUTH TO POWER Al Gore’s influential climate change doc gets an evolving sequel…
It’s not uncommon for filmmakers to fine tune their features until weeks before release, but spare a thought for husband/ wife directing duo Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk, who’ve made An Inconvenient Sequel in the wake of Hurricane Trump.
“The puzzle pieces kept changing,” Cohen tells Teasers just before the film’s Cannes premiere. “When we screened the film at Sundance, it was right after Trump had been elected, and we had to think long and hard about whether or not we would reopen the film.” A new sequence incorporating Trump’s election was added, says Cohen “but at a certain point you have to lock the film, and call it what it is”.
‘It’ is a decade-later sequel to An Inconvenient Truth – Al Gore’s cinematic wake-up call about the dangers of global warming. The film follows Gore, cinéma-vérité style, over 18 months as he
continues to educate through his slideshow and plays a pivotal role in the negotiations for the Paris Climate Agreement, a plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions to which every UN country but Nicaragua and Syria signed up. That number is now three, thanks to President Trump’s decision to withdraw the USA from the accord on 1 June – a fact the finished film “will address”.
But it’s not all doom and gloom. Truth To Power presents a hopeful message for the future. “It is not too late to avoid the most catastrophic consequences of the climate crisis,” Gore reassures. “This movie shows that the dangers we face from the climate crisis are now more severe than what the scientists predicted, but the primary message is: we now have the solutions available.”
The film also acts as an urgent call to action, with Gore hoping it will inspire people to demand faster change. “I never imagined that this would become a kind of mission for my life,” Gore reflects. “But it’s exciting to me to see this movement toward the political tipping point. And when you lay that hope alongside the danger it might face, and the fact that the stakes are far higher than with any challenge humanity has ever confronted, how can you not pour your energy into it?”
ETA | 25 AUGUST / AN INCONVENIENT SEQUEL: TRUTH TO POWER OPENS THIS SUMMER.