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There's never a bad time to watch a movie focused on the future of the planet. And as 2023 begins, let's start on a responsible note. Here's a look at the all-time classics and silly action flicks to serious documentaries and science fiction, you might be surprised by the number of films in which climate change has a major part. Here's the list of top ten films gathered by the team working in the Washington Post and Bloomberg team.
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Snowpiercer (2013): Geoengineering has failed. Earth has entered a catastrophic ice age. The vestiges of the human race circumnavigate the world on a train on infinite loop, and order is maintained by a malevolent Tilda Swinton. Directed by Oscar-winning Bong Joon-ho ("Parasite," "Okja"), "Snowpiercer" is a dystopian thriller where the class system dictates all, and the omnipresent cold is the least of passengers' worries.
Image Credit: IMDB
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Interstellar (2014): The inhabitants of Interstellar's parched, dusty America might not talk about climate change, but the parallels between their world and ours are uncanny. At the end of the 21st century, a scientist-turned-farmer sets off on a desperate mission to find a new home for humanity after Earth's agriculture fails. It's visually stunning, based on theoretical physics and almost three hours long - the perfect Christmas movie.
Image Credit: Melinda Sue Gordon
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Wall-E (2008): It's impossible not to fall in love with the adorable garbage-collecting Pixar robot with a curious personality and a knack for adventure. The movie is set 700 years into the future and all humans have left the planet, now a wasteland covered in litter. Wall-E is the last robot standing, but his lonely life is shaken when a sleek, egg-shaped robot named EVE lands on Earth
Image Credit: Disney/PIXAR
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The Day After Tomorrow (2004): End-of-the-world movies are one of my guilty pleasures and this modern classic has it all. Humans messing with the climate, giant waves, tremendous storms, great action scenes, a pack of wolves and Jake Gyllenhaal. You've seen it already? Me too, and I'm probably watching it again
Image Credit: Twentieth Century Fox
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The Mist" (2007): This is absolutely not a climate movie. I will not make the case that director Frank Darabont or Stephen King, who wrote the novel, had carbon dioxide in mind when putting together this silly gem of a B-movie in which what looks like, uh, sinister air proves to be ridiculously deadly. But just try to watch the scenes of social turmoil, denial of evidence and failure of collective action in the face of a supernatural disaster without seeing it as a climate-ish metaphor of sorts. Find the more recently released black and white cut.
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Alcarrs (2022): The life of a family of peach growers is shaken when the landowner decides to cut the trees, install solar panels and switch to farming clean power. Shot in Catalan and featuring non-professional actors from the Spanish fruit-growing region of Lleida, this year's winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival is an intimate portrait of a rural way of life that's disappearing, and of the disruptive side of the clean-energy transition.
Image Credit: IMdB
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Chasing Coral (2017): If you've never seen coral reefs or if you love them, or both, this is a must-watch. Seeing corals changed my life, and this movie goes some way to do justice to one of the world's greatest wonders. It also shows what climate change's consequences look like in visceral detail. You want to look away, but you can't.
Image Credit: IMdB