Naomi Klein’s epic This Changes Everything opens at Palm Theatre in SLO October 16

In her book This Changes Everything, Naomi Klein asks “What if confronting the climate crisis is the best chance we’ll ever get to build a better world?” Filled with empowering stories from all over the world of successful grassroots fights against ruinous corporate projects, a battle Klein dubs “Blockadia,” that book has now been turned into a documentary. Filmed over 211 shoot days in nine countries and five continents over four years, This Changes Everything is an epic attempt to re-imagine the vast challenge of climate change.

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.

Unlike many works about the climate crisis, this is not a film that tries to scare the audience into action: it aims to empower. Provocative, compelling, and accessible to even the most climate-fatigued viewers, This Changes Everything will leave you refreshed and inspired, reflecting on the ties between us, the kind of lives we really want, and why the climate crisis is at the center of it all.

Thank you to Jim Dee at the Palm Theatre for making sure we get to see this film.