Film Review: "I Am Greta" (2020).

"A force of nature." This is I Am Greta. This documentary film directed by Nathan Grossman. The story of teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg is told through compelling, never-before-seen footage in this intimate documentary from Swedish director Nathan Grossman. Starting with her one-person school strike for climate action outside the Swedish Parliament, Grossman follows Greta—a shy student with Asperger’s—in her rise to prominence and her galvanizing global impact as she sparks school strikes around the world. The film culminates with her extraordinary wind-powered voyage across the Atlantic Ocean to speak at the UN Climate Action Summit in New York City.

On 3 January 2003, the internationally known Swedish environmental activist, Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg, was born. She began her activism by missing school to protest what she perceives is the inaction and/or insufficient response of governments and the business sector to the United Nations Paris Agreement on climate change. Thunberg is known for her youth and her straightforward speaking manner, both in public and to political leaders and assemblies, in which she criticises world leaders for their failure to take sufficient action to address the climate crisis. Thunberg's activism started after convincing her parents to adopt several lifestyle choices to reduce their own carbon footprint. In August 2018, at age fifteen, she started spending her school days outside the Swedish parliament to call for stronger action on climate change by holding up a sign reading "School strike for climate". Soon, other students engaged in similar protests in their own communities. Together, they organised a school climate strike movement under the name Fridays for Future. After Thunberg addressed the 2018 United Nations Climate Change Conference, student strikes took place every week somewhere in the world. In 2019, there were multiple coordinated multi-city protests involving over a million students each. To avoid flying, Thunberg sailed to North America where she attended the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit. Her sudden rise to world fame has made her both a leader and a target for critics. Her influence on the world stage has been described by The Guardian and other newspapers as the "Greta effect". She has received numerous honours and awards including an inclusion in Time's 100 most influential people, being the youngest Time Person of the Year, inclusion in the Forbes list of The World's 100 Most Powerful Women (2019), and two consecutive nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize (2019 and 2020).

This Hulu documentary is a sobering, uncompromising portrait of an extraordinary figure and her fight to educate the world on the effects of global warming on our world. The film should not have to change minds, but perhaps it will change them anyway, or at least make this seem as pressing as it needs to be. Thunberg took a stern, pissed-off tone when she was in the spotlight, grimacing in an anorak in the middle of a field, as though her patience was nearly spent. Watching the film may just be the best use you can make of your time this evening.

Simon says I Am Greta receives: