New film documents Thunberg’s rise

In the first days of Greta Thunberg’s solitary sidewalk protest outside Swedish Parliament in August 2018, most walk right past her. Some pause and ask why she’s not in school. But people steadily begin to take notice of the steadfast 16-year-old girl.

Those humble beginnings of Thunberg ’s protest — the unlikely birth of a global movement — are seen in the opening minutes of the new documentary “I Am Greta.” Since then, Thunberg has met world leaders, been vilified by others, and seen countless join her in an evergrowing resistance to environmental complacency. It’s a journey she readily describes as totally surreal — “It’s like living in a movie and you don’t know the plot,” she says — but also affirming.

“I look back and I remember how it felt. I think: Oh, I was so young and naive back then — which is quite funny,” says Thunberg, recalling her first days of protest in an interview. “So much has changed for me since then but also so much hasn’t changed from the bigger perspective.”

“I feel like now I’m happier in my life,” she adds. “When you do something that’s meaningful, it gives you the feeling that you’re meaningful.”

“I Am Greta,” which debuts Friday on Hulu, is the first documentary to chart the meteoric rise of Thunberg from an anonymous, uncertain teen to an international activist. As an intimate chronicle of a singular figure, it plays like a coming-of-age story for someone who seemed, from the start, uncannily of age. The film, directed by Nathan Grossman, captures the head-spinning accomplishments, and the toll they sometimes take, on the bluntly impassioned Thunberg.

For an activist who insists on putting the cause before herself, it’s also a somewhat uncomfortable acceptance of the spotlight. “I haven’t really achieved anything,” Thunberg says, speaking by phone from Sweden. “Everything the movement has achieved.”