The Emperor’s New Clothes used to be her favorite story, says Greta Thunberg. How fitting, the story tells like a vain emperor with the words, he wears the most beautiful clothes, presents his bare bottom. People only dare to react when a child says what everyone can actually see: His Majesty is naked.
The BBC three-part series Greta Thunberg – A year to change the world from Paul McGann transports this fairy tale into modern times and, above all, into reality. This time it’s not about bare skin, but about bare facts, nothing less than saving the world. In three times fifty minutes, the documentary accompanies the young climate activist as she points to all the problems that we know about and yet do not fundamentally address them. Coal mining, factory farming, deforestation, aircraft emissions, glaciers that have melted forever, and coral reefs that have died – the list is long and not unknown. In the documentary series you will probably not come across anything surprising and that is precisely what should make you sit up and take notice. Because Thunberg’s reaction and her sincere and consistent look show how dull and exhausted one reacts to the bad news.
“People call me a brat, an idiot, but for reasons I don’t understand, they listen when I talk.”
Long-term observation will start in 2019 during Thunberg’s break from school. The then 16-year-old will not return home for 134 days. Her goal is to research global warming and convince world leaders to fight the climate crisis. To do this, she travels with her father Svante in tow by catamaran across the Atlantic and back again. She speaks at the UN climate summit in Madrid and on the stages of the Fridays-for-Future demos. She visits places that make the climate crisis frighteningly visible, such as Europe’s largest lignite power station in Belchatów, Poland, whose steaming chimneys are almost as high as the Eiffel Tower, or the province of Alberta in Canada, where you stand between poisonous ponds and mountains of sulfur because of the oil sands mining. In California, she speaks to people who have lost everything to forest fires. One man tells in tears how much he knew, when he fled the flames, that he was leaving people behind in his city. 86 people died. Destroyed existences, challenges so great that they seem impossible to master. The impressive images and encounters are commented on by marine biologists, climate researchers and sociologists. With their research results, they all underline what Thunberg said in 2019: “Our house is on fire.”
During the three episodes, viewers can watch Greta Thunberg grow up in front of the world. Analytically, she reflects on the role she plays in public, mocked by those in power such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and former American President Donald Trump. “People call me a brat, an idiot,” says Thunberg, “but for reasons I don’t understand, they listen when I talk.” Nobody else asks us so consistently to finally take care of our naked emperor.
Greta Thunberg – One year to change the world from November 7th. at Sky Nature