''This Changes Everything'' is a 2015 documentary film directed by

Avi Lewis Avram David "Avi" Lewis (born May 1967) is a Canadian activist, documentary filmmaker, former host of the Al Jazeera English show '' Fault Lines'' and former host of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) current-affairs programs '' Counter ...

. It is based on the book '' This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate'' by his wife,

Naomi Klein Naomi Klein (born May 8, 1970) is a Canadian author, social activist, and filmmaker known for her political analyses; support of ecofeminism, organized labour, and criticism of corporate globalization, fascism and Criticism of capitalism, ca ...

. The film is a Canada-United States coproduction. At the

2015 Toronto International Film Festival The 40th annual Toronto International Film Festival was held from 10 to 20 September 2015. On 28 July 2015 the first wave of films to be screened at the Festival was announced. Jean-Marc Vallée's ''Demolition'' starring Jake Gyllenhaal and N ...

, the film was first runner-up for the People's Choice Award: Documentaries.

Synopsis

The film surveys a number of

environmental activists The environmental movement (sometimes referred to as the ecology movement) is a social movement that aims to protect the natural world from harmful environmental practices in order to create sustainable living. In its recognition of humanity a ...

around the world: *

Alberta, Canada Alberta is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Canada. It is a part of Western Canada and is one of the three Canadian Prairies, prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to its west, Saskatchewan to its east, t ...

— Crystal, a young

indigenous Indigenous may refer to: *Indigenous peoples *Indigenous (ecology) In biogeography, a native species is indigenous to a given region or ecosystem if its presence in that region is the result of only local natural evolution (though often populari ...

Beaver Lake Cree Nation The Beaver Lake Cree Nation is a First Nations band government located northeast of Edmonton, Alberta, representing people of the Cree ethno-linguistic group in the area around Lac La Biche, Alberta, where the band office is currently located ...

leader in Athabasca oil sands country, fights for access to a restricted

military base A military base is a facility directly owned and operated by or for the military or one of its branches that shelters military equipment and personnel, and facilitates training and operations. A military base always provides accommodations for ...

. *

Powder River Basin The Powder River Basin is a geologic structural basin in southeast Montana and northeast Wyoming, about east to west and north to south, known for its extensive coal reserves. The former hunting grounds of the Oglala Lakota, the area is very ...

Montana Montana ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota to the east, South Dakota to the southeast, Wyoming to the south, an ...

— Mike and Alexis, a goat ranching couple impacted by oil from a broken pipeline. They organize against fossil fuel extraction and form an alliance with the

Northern Cheyenne The Northern Cheyenne Tribe of the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation () is the federally recognized Northern Cheyenne tribe and a Plains tribe. The Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation is reservation located in southeastern Montana, that is ...

tribe to bring

solar power Solar power, also known as solar electricity, is the conversion of energy from sunlight into electricity, either directly using photovoltaics (PV) or indirectly using concentrated solar power. Solar panels use the photovoltaic effect to c ...

to the nearby reservation. * Halkidiki, Greece— Melachrini, a

housewife A housewife (also known as a homemaker or a stay-at-home mother/mom/mum) is a woman whose role is running or managing her family's home—housekeeping, which may include Parenting, caring for her children; cleaning and maintaining the home; Sew ...

opposed to mining and drilling projects by Canadian corporation Eldorado Gold; against the backdrop of Greece in crisis. *

Andhra Pradesh, India Andhra Pradesh (ISO: , , AP) is a state on the east coast of southern India. It is the seventh-largest state and the tenth-most populous in the country. Telugu is the most widely spoken language in the state, as well as its official lang ...

— Jyothi, a

matriarch Matriarchy is a social system in which positions of power and privilege are held by women. In a broader sense it can also extend to moral authority, social privilege, and control of property. While those definitions apply in general English, ...

fighting a proposed

coal-fired power plant A coal-fired power station or coal power plant is a thermal power station which burns coal to generate electricity. Worldwide there are about 2,500 coal-fired power stations, on average capable of generating a gigawatt each. They generate a ...

that will destroy a

wetland A wetland is a distinct semi-aquatic ecosystem whose groundcovers are flooded or saturated in water, either permanently, for years or decades, or only seasonally. Flooding results in oxygen-poor ( anoxic) processes taking place, especially ...

. *

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

— Smog-choked Beijing.

Reception

Box office

The domestic box office total as of 2020 is $16,692.

Reviews

The film received a mixed reaction from film critics. It garnered a 56% rating at

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...

, based on 16 reviews. At

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

, which assigns a

weighted average The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The ...

score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film has received a mixed or average score of 59, based on seven reviews. Writing for the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...

'', critic Michael Rechtshaffen wrote: "They may not do enough to alter the climate change film landscape, but Klein and those impassioned protesters provide something that has been in short supply in the predecessors — namely, a modicum of hope for the future." Writing for ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'', reviewer Henry Barnes stated that the "implication f the film's opening confession from the author that she's 'always kind of hated films about climate change'is that ''This Changes Everything'' is going to excite and inspire in a way that climate change documentaries have failed to before. It really doesn’t. It gives those of us in the affluent parts of the world more reason to feel bad and only a suggestion of what to do with that feeling."

References

External links

Official website
*
Official Facebook

Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis on their documentary ''This Changes Everything''
an interview on '' Day 6'' (

CBC Radio CBC Radio is the English-language radio operations of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The CBC operates a number of radio networks serving different audiences and programming niches, all of which (regardless of language) are outlined below ...

; 18 September 2015)
This Changes Everything: Naomi Klein & Avi Lewis Film Re-imagines Vast Challenge of Climate Change (Pt. 1)
an
(Pt. 2)
an interview on ''

Democracy Now! ''Democracy Now!'' is an hour-long TV, radio, and Internet news program based in Manhattan and hosted by journalists Amy Goodman (who also acts as the show's executive producer), Juan González, and Nermeen Shaikh. The show, which airs live ...

'' (2 October 2015)
Excerpt from the film
on

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

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