This year’s Sundance Film Festival will open with the follow-up to Al Gore’s Oscar-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" (it's called in a rather boring way "An Inconvenient Sequel"). The festival will feature a subset of 14 documentaries and special projects specifically about climate change but unfortunately no feature movies about climate issues from either Hollywood or indie producers.
John Cooper, director of the film festival, erred on the side of caution. What? No feature movies like "Taklub" or others? Tell that to Robert Redford.


The subset of films and projects is called “The New Climate." Again, sadly, no feature movies from Hollywood or indies. What's wrong with Sundance?

Ann Merchant, deputy executive director of the Office of Communications at The National Academies, said the scientific community understands it's tough to make science entertaining in feature movies.

“But film and television give such an opportunity to give voice to those stories,” she said.
Ed Maibach, director of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University, agreed. 

“Climate scientists are trying desperately to share what they know with the public about our changing climate," he said. "But they simply don’t have a platform from which to tell stories [although there is a platform called Cli-Fi which was set up just for this purpose and maybe later Hollywood producers will follow this trend. 'GEOSTORM' is coming from a major Hollywood studio in 2017.]”

Sundance organizers said they’re not sure if the new subset is going to be a permanent fixture. In the age of Trump A.D. ["Anno Donaldo"] it should be!
 

The Sundance Film Festival runs from Jan. 19 - 29 in Utah.