"Hope, when honestly depicted, can be just as transformative as despair"

Given the scale of the climate crisis, the number of films addressing the issue is surprisingly few. For the second half of the twentieth century, the apocalypse we feared most was nuclear, with climate issues only emerging obliquely, in dystopian sci-fi films like Silent Running (1972) and Soylent Green (1973). But in the last few decades, as the climate crisis has deepened, cli-fi (climate fiction) has grown as a sub-genre.

Cli-fi movies are often not subtle, with stories centred on the aftermath of environmental apocalypse and characters struggling to survive in a world covered by water (Waterworld, 1995), ice (The Day After Tomorrow, 2004; Snowpiercer, 2013), desert (Mad Max: Fury Road, 2015), trash (Wall-E, 2008) or some bleak and calamitous combination thereof. These films have helped bring the issue to public attention, but the spectacular scale of the destruction can also leave audiences feeling powerless to affect a meaningful change. In focusing solely on the post-apocalyptic and the dystopian, their primary tool of persuasion is fear – inspiring for some but paralysing for others.

The scientific facts of climate change are unequivocal (despite the denials of certain world leaders), but as dramatized so effectively in Don’t Look Up (2021), a good (or at least more persuasive) story trumps truth and facts every time. So, the types of story we tell about the climate crisis really matter - we need more hopeful stories, ones that contemplate the causes of the climate crisis, not just its worst-case scenarios, and that offer audiences more agency to affect change in the here and now. Cinema, with its status as a ‘universal’ medium that can cross boundaries of nation, language and culture, is perfectly primed to do this at the scale the climate crisis demands but needs to widen its own storytelling horizons. The climate crisis is everywhere, so addressing the issue in cli-fi alone isn’t enough.

What, then, are the hopeful alternatives to the rather obvious and the bordering on cryptic climate-crisis messaging spilling out of mainstream Hollywood? Why is there no snow for the winter skiers in White Christmas (1954)? And isn’t it curious that Elsa, in Frozen II (2019), turns to a glacier for answers — as if the natural world itself now needs a consultation to restore harmony with humankind?

Stories of hope, it seems, have increasingly found a home in the non-fiction realm. The documentary form — once relegated to dusty 16mm reels in classrooms or art-house festivals — now commands global attention. Documentaries account for a growing share of the film industry’s economy, with platforms like Netflix investing millions each year. Yet, most high-earning titles still revolve around celebrities, sports, or true crime - the comfortable dramas of human obsession. Only a handful break through which place the climate crisis at their core.

One of the first to do so on a global scale was Davis Guggenheim’s An Inconvenient Truth (2006), often described as “by far the most terrifying film you will ever see.” It laid the groundwork for a new generation of filmmaking activists. But decades earlier, a surprising studio was already sounding the alarm. In 1954 — the same year as White Christmas — Disney released The Vanishing Prairie, a feature documentary lamenting the “unaccountable ways of man” and the destruction of America’s grasslands in glorious Technicolor.

Fast forward to 2025, and “emergency viewing” — the kind of urgent, issue-driven documentary programming that translates scientific data into human stories — plays a pivotal role in shaping how we understand the climate emergency. The power of documentary storytelling has never been more vital.

But what of hope? Are documentaries simply frightening audiences into awareness or can they also offer paths forward? All That Breathes (2022), directed by Shaunak Sen, follows two brothers in Delhi who run a bird sanctuary amidst an ailing and polluted urban ecosystem. It's quiet message — help and heal what you can — is profoundly human. It insists that it’s not too late. Similarly, Damon Gameau’s 2040 (2019) approaches the crisis with optimism, presenting tangible, accessible solutions anyone can adopt.

Both films remind us that care, imagination, and small acts of repair are powerful cinematic tools. They suggest that hope, when honestly depicted, can be just as transformative as despair.

Documentary — and cinema at large — holds the power to not only bear witness to the climate crisis but to reimagine our place within it. In an era defined by uncertainty, storytelling remains one of our most essential forms of action.