Al Gore’s new climate change movie to open Sundance
The Sundance Film Festival will open in January with a new climate change movie from Al Gore — and the timing, unfortunately, could not be better.
Paramount Pictures and Participant Media announced Friday that the followup to the 2006 Oscarwinning documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth” — in which filmmaker Davis Guggenheim documented Gore’s traveling slide show on global warming — will follow the former U.S. vice-president as he travels the world exploring advances and challenges in the fight against climate change.
In a statement, Gore said: “Now more than ever we must rededicate ourselves to solving the climate crisis. But we have reason to be hopeful; the solutions to the crisis are at hand.”
So that’s good news, yes? Presumably, Gore said as much to President-Elect Donald Trump when the two met last week for a chat that Gore described, somewhat enigmatically, as an “extremely interesting conversation, and to be continued.”
Not so fast. Three days after that meeting, Trump named Scott Pruitt, Oklahoma’s attorney general — and a climate change skeptic, who is currently suing the Environmental Protection Agency — to head that agency, provoking outrage from environmentalists.
Perhaps Gore can reserve a couple of seats to the screening of his new film for Trump and Pruitt. The as-yet-unnamed documentary, directed by Bonnie Cohen and Jon Shenk (“Audrie & Daisy”), will premiere on opening night of the festival, which will have an environmental focus throughout its 11-day run ( Jan. 19 to 29).
Legendary actor and Sundance Institute founder Robert Redford said in a statement: “My own engagement on climate change began more than 40 years ago, and the urgency I felt then has only grown stronger given its very real and increasingly severe consequences. If we’re going to avoid the worst-case scenario, then we must act boldly and immediately, even in the face of indifference, apathy and opposition.”
In truth, Trump probably won’t be able to make it to the film’s debut in Park City, Utah. His inauguration is scheduled for the next morning in Washington. But we’re guessing his new friend Al Gore could arrange for a special screening. Trump will, after all, soon have his own private cinema in the White House.