Environmental Justice Focused Films
Find films and documentaries about Environmental Justice stories.
Mossville: When Great Trees Fall (2019)
“Mossville, Louisiana: A once-thriving community founded by formerly enslaved and free people of color, and an economically flourishing safe haven for generations of African American families. Today it’s a breeding ground for petrochemical plants and their toxic black clouds. Many residents are forced from their homes, and those that stay suffer from prolonged exposure to contamination and pollution. Amid this chaos and injustice stands one man who refuses to abandon his family’s land - and his community.”
Bad River (2024)
Bad River “is a new documentary film which chronicles the Wisconsin-based Bad River Band and its ongoing fight for sovereignty, a story which unfolds in a groundbreaking way through a series of shocking revelations, devastating losses, and a powerful legacy of defiance and resilience, which includes a David vs. Goliath battle to save Lake Superior, the largest freshwater resource in America. As Eldred Corbine, a Bad River Tribal Elder declares: ‘We gotta protect it… die for it, if we have to.’”
Flint’s Deadly Water (2019)
“Five years after the start of Flint’s water crisis, FRONTLINE exposes its hidden toll. Our two-year investigation traces how a public health disaster that’s become known for the lead poisoning of thousands of children also spawned one of the largest outbreaks of Legionnaires’ disease in U.S. history.” Produced by PBS.
This Changes Everything (2018)
“Inspired by Naomi Klein’s international non-fiction bestseller This Changes Everything, the film presents seven powerful portraits of communities on the front lines, from Montana’s Powder River Basin to the Alberta Tar Sands, from the coast of South India to Beijing and beyond.
Interwoven with these stories of struggle is Klein’s narration, connecting the carbon in the air with the economic system that put it there. Throughout the film, Klein builds to her most controversial and exciting idea: that we can seize the existential crisis of climate change to transform our failed economic system into something radically better.”
Requiem for a River (2023)
“Requiem for a River explores the New Mexico stretch of the Rio Grande — an iconic but endangered American waterway — in a time of climate change and calls for environmental justice. Through lyrical imagery and in-depth interviews with a diverse range of residents — Native, Latinx, Indo-Hispanic and Anglo — this visually poetic documentary reveals the once-mighty river’s role as a lifeline in the desert and asks whether the keys to a more sustainable, equitable future lie in New Mexico’s ancient past.”
How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2022)
Based on the nonfiction manifesto by Andreas Malm, this fictional film tells the story of a group of environmental activists. They are faced with the devastating impacts of the climate crisis, including the death of a loved one due to extreme heat. Taking place in Long Beach, California, the group organizes and plans to disrupt an oil pipeline.
This is Fracking (2023)
“This is Fracking centers around the theme of climate colonialism, showing how oil companies, while banned from fracking in their home countries in the Global North, are instead fracking the Global South, in areas where environmental laws are more lax and the economic situation more dire. As oil companies reap record profits, local communities including the Mapuche Indigenous People and the fruit producers of Vaca Muerta are suffering the devastating impacts of earthquakes caused by fracking, widespread pollution, encroachment on traditional and agricultural lands, and increased illnesses like leukemia caused by the chemicals found in the drinking water. This is Fracking reveals the true story behind fracking in Patagonia, the one we have not yet been shown.”