Movies For Thinking People - Three Films and a Book - January 2026

More and more movies are about Climate Change in various forms. Some I have watched lately include the very brilliant Danish mini -series "Families Like Ours" (2024) the prescient 2007 British Canadian Film "Flood," set in London and the French film "Green Tide." 

"Families Like Ours" (SBS in Australia, CANAL in EU) - SBS links may not work outside Australia

This was so good that I literally marathoned all 8 episodes, like a good book that you can't put down. It was about Denmark’s entire population having to be evacuated because of flooding and sea level rise. This is rather ironic because Denmark has prepared itself better than almost any country besides The Netherlands for just such an eventuality and has done more than most to mitigate against Climate Change too.

Various countries offer to take what are in effectively Climate Refugees. People who have always had comfortable, predictable lives are now thrown into chaos. Strict limits have been set on who may go where and when which leads to some families having to be broken up in various ways and with dire consequences for some. Choices being made now are more or less forever. 

Needless to say, the individual stories are heart -rending and gut wrenching, especially as circumstances around them deteriorate. Nevertheless, there are also incidences of genuine human kindness. Perhaps because in this story it’s happening to white middle class people, it is much easier to identify with their plight and to understand, that there - but for accidents of time and place, it could be any of us.  Watch it if you dare, it’s an absolute tour de force.

 

" GreenTide " - SBS (France, with Subtitles (2023), 1h 48 mins) Adult Themes

 Based on a true story about how the unexplained deaths of farm animals and humans on Brittany's idyllic coast were finally linked to green algae emanating from feedstock on a factory farm.  At once tender and gritty, the movie traces a reporter's struggles as she uncovers corruption and cover -ups and encounters considerable hostility from farmers and others. We see the local authorities avoiding serious enquiries so as not to damage the region's tourism and real estate values and farmers not wanting doubts cast on the quality of their produce. They make little enough from it as it is and must compete in a global market, something to which many farmers will be able to relate. 

It is these threads running through the narrative which give it its depth and plausibilty. The lead characters are very sympathetic too.  

"The Flood " - YouTube (2019) (Midnight Screening, 3 hrs)

Please note this is the 2019 UK version starring Tom Hardy, not the 2023 US version which I have not yet seen, but has something about Alligators in it according to the trailer.

It starts off with a Weather Station in the North Sea being washed away by a storm surge and then coastal towns and eventually London being threatened by the failure of its storm barriers. 

A BOOK!

“THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER” – Octavia Butler –Finally got around to reading one. It’s been quite wintery this summer – we almost had snow at Christmas! - when it hasn’t been blazing hot. Always nice  to curl up by the heat pump then, though it’s not a patch on a roaring fire.

This was written in 1993 and also gives us a very dystopian look at our future. There is little rain, water is so precious, that it can’t be used to put out fires. There are lots of fires. Beyond the walls of the cul de sac where the protagonist lives with her family, people have become desperate and dangerous. Many have fallen ill or succumbed to a drug that turns them into crazed pyromaniacs….

 As the young woman writes in her diary,” I didn’t believe we would be allowed to sit behind our walls, looking clean and fat and rich to the hungry, thirsty, homeless, jobless , filthy people outside.” (p.176).

Throughout, you feel the walls closing in and a mounting sense of danger- packs of dogs roam, children are given shooting lessons, the nightly watch fails. The one alternative is  the privatised towns – you work for bed and board only if you’re lucky, but there’s security. [Once again life follows art – this is really happening   

 It’s not the path the young woman chooses, but I won’t tell you more.  Let’s hope life doesn’t follow art as it seems to have with “Blade Runner.”