The documentary “I Am Greta,” about Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg, opens in Japan later this month, about a year after it was released in theaters and on streaming services throughout much of the rest of the world.
Given that the time period covered by the movie starts with Thunberg’s solo school strike in Stockholm in August 2018 to draw attention to the climate crisis and concludes with her withering denunciation of world leaders at the U.N. Climate Action Summit in September 2019 for their continued inaction, the movie feels dated. The effects of climate change in the past year alone have been acute and devastating, not to mention that Thunberg was 15 when director Nathan Grossman started following her and she’s now 18. That’s a huge, vital chunk of time in any young person’s life.
However, nothing much has changed in those three years in terms of the world’s response to the climate crisis, as pointed out by Thunberg herself during her most recent appearance in the news cycle, when she again blasted world leaders, this time at the Youth4Climate summit in Milan on Sept. 28, for their lack of concrete action in addressing the problem, saying that all they offer is “blah blah blah” — meaningless phrases to placate those who are justifiably scared for their futures in a world that’s becoming less amenable to human life.
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