A listing of movies for high school students and adults exploring dystopic futures and the social and practical effects of climate change.
For more see:
- Climate Change Fiction: An Updated Annotated Bibliography
- Climate Poetry for Teaching
- Climate Short Stories for Teaching
- Climate Novels for Teaching
- Climate Fiction: Dystopias and Allegories
- Climate Movies
Flow (2024) by Gints Zilbalodis. This Latvian animated film follows a cat and its animal companions as they escape a sudden flood in a world mysteriously empty of humans. The relationships between distinct, memorable characters– the cat, the dog, the capybara, the lemur, the bird, and the whale– convey the values of acceptance, solidarity, and forgiveness while also warning of the dangers of materialism and clinging to the past. Winning the Oscar for best animated feature, the film makes an explicit connection to climate change within its dreamy allegory.
How to Blow Up A Pipeline (2023) by Daniel Goldhaber. This fictional heist thriller imagines how an intrepid crew might directly attack fossil fuel infrastructure in order to interrupt climate change. Even more powerful, however, is its thoughtful and sympathetic portrayal of the various environmental and personal reasons why each member of this crew chooses to take this desperate action.
Extrapolations (2023) by Scott Z. Burns and Dorothy Fortenberry. This television series extends 30 years into the future to imagine how people’s everyday lives (or more specifically, the lives of multiracial, upper-middle-class Americans like its audience) are impacted by climate change, forcing its audience to consider the same plight.”
Don’t Look Up (2021) by Adam McKay. This satirical film starts with the classic disaster movie trope of an asteroid hitting the earth but abandons all the triumphant heroism or unified patriotic fervor. Instead, we get denial, misinformation, and capitalist shortsightedness.
First Reformed (2017) by Paul Schrader. This film portrays the spiritual crisis of a man coming to terms with ecological destruction. The protagonist, an alcoholic pastor, becomes radicalized when he realizes that his church is supported by fossil fuel money.