Climate Change

Climate Change

The documentaries in OVID’s Climate Change Collection take viewers on a global tour through the effects of planetary warming, from the melting of polar ice caps to the front-line resistance of indigenous communities. Anthropocene, Planetary, Antarctic Edge, and Strait Through the Ice uncover the rapidly changing face of our environment. In the activist-driven documentaries Dirty Business, Groundswell Rising, and A Concerned Citizen, the long-standing political conflict with the fossil fuel industry takes center stage.

Alongside the planetary effects of climate change, documentaries like Triple Divide, Split Estate, and Cooked foreground the disproportionate impacts on poor and minority communities. Oil and Water and Keepers of Justice center on grassroots indigenous activism, where the struggle for environmental justice is also a struggle for survival. Rounding out to collection, Inhabitants, Post-Carbon Futures, and Racing to Zero point the way to a more sustainable and socially just future.

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Climate Change
  • After the Spill

    Directed by Jon Bowermaster • Documentary • 2016 • 62 minutes

    In 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated the coast of Louisiana. Five years later the Deepwater Horizon exploded and spilled more than 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, the worst ecologic disaster in North American hist...

  • Anthropocene

    Directed by Steve Bradshaw • Documentary • 2016 • 97 minutes

    A Working Group of international scientists is deciding whether to declare a new geological epoch—the Anthropocene—a planet shaped more by mankind than nature. Its members tell the story of the Anthropocene and argue whether it's a tra...

  • Antarctic Edge: 70° South

    Directed by Dena Seidel • Documentary • 2015 • 72 minutes

    A thrilling journey to one of the world's most perilous environments, Antarctic Edge: 70° South follows a team of scientists as they explore the West Antarctic Peninsula.

    In the wake of devastating climate events like Superstorm Sandy an...

  • Backfired

    Directed by Dale Bell • Documentary • 2018 • 61 minutes

    BACKFIRED: When VW Lied to America tells the inside story of the VW scandal as it unravels beginning at West Virginia University in 2013 where a group of unsuspecting students accidentally discover the defeat device while doing rare on-road...

  • Bidder 70

    Directed by Beth Gage and George Gage • Documentary • 2012 • 73 minutes

    In 2008, as George W. Bush tried to gift the energy and mining industries thousands of acres of pristine Utah wilderness via a widely disputed federal auction, college student Tim DeChristopher monkey-wrenched the process. B...

  • Bluespace

    Directed by Ian Cheney • Documentary • 2016 • 73 minutes

    Could humans live on Mars? Would we want to? Emmy-nominated filmmaker Ian Cheney provides insight into our currently unsustainable relationship with our home planet by examining the sci-fi speculation of 'terraforming,' or making another p...

  • Cheat Neutral

    Directed by Beth Stratford • Documentary • 2008 • 13 minutes

    Since the1960s, concentrations of heartbreak, cheating and jealousy in the atmosphere have risen dramatically. CheatNeutral.com offers a unique market-based solution to this essential problem of modern life. For the cost of a condom, t...

  • Cheshire, Ohio

    Directed by Eve Morgenstern • Documentary • 2017 • 75 minutes

    Filmed over a decade, CHESHIRE, OHIO follows a community devastated by coal, starting with American Electric Power's buyout and bulldozing of this Ohio town after exposing residents to harmful emissions. Years later, the film returns ...

  • Come Hell or High Water

    Directed by Leah Mahan • Documentary • 2014 • 56 minutes

    COME HELL OR HIGH WATER follows the painful but inspiring journey of Derrick Evans, a Boston teacher who returns to his native coastal Mississippi when the graves of his ancestors are bulldozed to make way for the sprawling city of Gulfpor...

  • A Concerned Citizen

    Directed by Bo Boudart • Documentary • 2019 • 41 minutes

    A CONCERNED CITIZEN documents the work of Dr. Riki Ott, a citizen activist who predicted the Exxon Valdez oil spill hours before it happened and came to the aid of her Alaskan community in their battle to get fair compensation for their lo...

  • Cooked

    Directed by Judith Helfand • Documentary • 2020 • 82 minutes

    Chicago suffered the worst heat disaster in U.S history in 1995, when 739 residents--mostly elderly and black-died over the course of one week. As COOKED links the deadly heat wave's devastation back to the underlying manmade disaster ...

  • Day Zero - Episode 1: French Polynesia - Marine Life

    Directed by Nils Bökamp • Documentary • 2020 • 43 minutes

    Day Zero is portraying climate change in a different way - by immersing the viewer in nature’s bounty and by listening to stories told by local people. Filmmaker Nils Bökamp has identified unique spots around the world where nature’s pris...

  • Day Zero - Episode 2: Alaska - Glacier and Icy World

    Directed by Nils Bökamp • Documentary • 2020 • 43 minutes

    Day Zero is portraying climate change in a different way - by immersing the viewer in nature’s bounty and by listening to stories told by local people. Filmmaker Nils Bökamp has identified unique spots around the world where nature’s pris...

  • Day Zero - Episode 3: Austria and Bhutan - A Glimpse Into the Future

    Directed by Nils Bökamp • Documentary • 2020 • 43 minutes

    Day Zero is portraying climate change in a different way - by immersing the viewer in nature’s bounty and by listening to stories told by local people. Filmmaker Nils Bökamp has identified unique spots around the world where nature’s pris...

  • Denial

    Directed by Derek Hallquist • Documentary • 2017 • 92 minutes

    Every day our changing climate pushes us closer to an environmental catastrophe, but for most the problem is easy to ignore. As people we often find it difficult to face change. We'd rather be in denial. David Hallquist, CEO of a Verm...

  • Dirty Business

    Directed by Peter Bull • Documentary • 2011 • 90 minutes

    In the digital age, half of our electricity still comes from coal. DIRTY BUSINESS reveals the true social and environmental costs of coal power and tells the stories of innovators who are pointing the way to a renewable energy future.

    Gu...

  • A Fierce Green Fire

    Directed by Mark Kitchell • Documentary • 2012 • 101 minutes

    A FIERCE GREEN FIRE: The Battle For a Living Planet is the first big-picture exploration of the environmental movement - grassroots and global activism spanning fifty years from conservation to climate change. From halting dams in the ...

  • Groundswell Rising

    Directed by Renard Cohen • Documentary • 2014 • 70 minutes

    GROUNDSWELL RISING gives voice to ordinary folks engaged in a David and Goliath struggle against Big Oil and Gas. We meet parents, scientists, doctors, farmers and individuals across the political spectrum decrying the energy extraction ...

  • H2Omx

    Directed by Jose Cohen • Documentary • 2013 • 82 minutes

    Built on a basin surrounded by mountains and with little drainage, Mexico City is facing a water crisis driven by geography, population, and history. With a growing population, a depleted aquifer, and 40 percent of the water being brought ...

  • Inhabitants

    Directed by Costa Boutsikaris, Anna Palmer • Documentary • 2019 • 76 minutes

    For millennia Native Americans successfully stewarded and shaped their landscapes, but centuries of colonization have disrupted their ability to maintain their traditional land management practices. From deserts, coastl...

  • Keepers of the Future

    Directed by Avi Lewis • Documentary • 2018 • 24 minutes

    In a fertile floodplain in El Salvador, where the great river meets the sea, a peasant movement puts down roots — growing resilience in the scorched earth of exile and civil war. But soon these farmers and fishing folk discover new challeng...

  • Mr. CO2

    Directed by Yves Billy • Documentary • 2010 • 52 minutes

    MR. CO2 opens in Copenhagen, where the world's political leaders gather in December 2009 to try and hammer out a new carbon treaty to replace the Kyoto Accord. 

    The developing world, which faces the most devastation from climate change, p...

  • Oil and Water

    Directed by Francine Strickwerda and Laurel Spellman Smith • Documentary • 2014 • 78 minutes

    OIL & WATER is the coming of age story of two boys as they each confront one of the world's worst toxic disasters, the prolonged contamination of the Ecuadorian Amazon by Texaco and other oil companies. ...

  • Penguin Counters

    Directed by Peter Getzels & Harriet Gordon • Documentary • 2016 • 68 minutes

    Armed with low-tech gear and high-minded notions that penguin populations hold the key to human survival, Ron Naveen lays bare his 30 year love affair with the world's most pristine scientific laboratory: Antarctica. Th...