News
7 climate films to binge-watch next weekend
7 climate films to binge watch next weekend. Originally published by Yale Climate Connections.
By Sarah Wesseler · 2026-09-14T11:05:26.746Z
Stuck in his New York apartment during the pandemic, tech worker Alec Turnbull began thinking more and more about climate change, ultimately deciding to build a career in the field. After vaccines became available, he began meeting with people working on climate solutions. Coming home, he would tell his wife J. English Cook, an art historian writing a dissertation on cinema, about the worrying disconnect between the problem solvers he was encountering and the doom and gloom tone of climate conversations he was used to. This led the couple to wonder whether filmmakers were documenting the kinds of solutions they were learning about. “Where are these stories being told?” he recalls wondering. To bridge this gap, Turnbull and Cook launched the first iteration of the Climate Film Festival https://climatefilmfest.com/ during Climate Week NYC in 2023. Having screened more than 100 films about climate change and the environment to thousands of audience members in the years since, Turnbull has become an expert in the genre. As the 2026 festival kicks off this week in New York, he offers his top streaming recommendations for people who can’t attend in person. The White House Effect Get the newsletter for people who love the planet. You'll receive the latest climate change news, tips, and inspiring stories twice a week. Sign up to be part of the solution today. While it’s hard to imagine a Republican presidential candidate taking a pro climate action stance today, in the late 1980s, then Vice President George H.W. Bush vowed that if he were elected, he would counter “the greenhouse effect” with “the White House Effect.” Using archival footage, this documentary examines the political and economic forces that led him to abandon that pledge once in office. “A really amazing documentary about Indigenous leaders in the Amazon, backed by Leo DiCaprio,” Turnbull said. The film’s protagonist, Juma Xipaia, has survived multiple assassination attempts as a result of her environmental activism, which began at age 13 when her community in the Brazilian Amazon was threatened by the construction of a hydroelectric dam. The documentary traces her continuing struggle to protect the rain forest as an adult, including her work at the country’s newly formed Ministry of Indigenous Peoples. Filmed over a 10 year period, this documentary spotlights a working class Brooklyn neighborhood contending with climate risk, gentrification, and a legacy of environmental damage. It patiently reveals how different people and organizations react to a developer’s plans to turn Industry City, a vast former industrial site, into an “innovation district.” “I think it’s for a particular type of urbanist nerd, but if you are that type, it really scratches an itch of showing how the sausage gets made, of the back and forth between city and activists, and being able to find collaborations going forward,” Turnbull said. Julia Roberts won an Oscar for her portrayal of legal clerk turned environmental activist Erin Brockovich in this 2000 film. The Climate Film Festival showed a newly restored version last year to celebrate the movie’s 25th anniversary. “Twenty five years after its release, the story of groundwater contamination and corporate accountability remained an unusually direct example of environmental harm entering popular cinema through character, humor, and legal drama,” the organizers wrote. Only 28% of U.S. residents regularly hear about climate change in the media, but 77% want that news. We can change that, and our only limitation is the size of our budget. Unlike some outlets, we don’t have fossil fuel backers. And we’re not funded directly by Yale University. Will you chip in to put more climate news in front of Americans in 2025? This documentary tells the story of Lonnie Thompson, a scientist who has spent his career traversing glaciers around the world to collect ice cores revealing how Earth’s climate has changed over the centuries. “Sort of a real life Indiana Jones adventure story,” Turnbull said. A 2024 DreamWorks film, “The Wild Robot” stars Lupita Nyong’o as a robot in a postapocalyptic world who gets stranded on an uninhabited island and forms an unlikely bond with a baby goose. Although the movie doesn’t explicitly discuss global warming, its depictions of flooded cities and extreme weather allude to a world shaped by climate change. Filmmakers Josh and Rebecca Tickell have produced three celebrity packed documentaries about regenerative farming, which seeks to sequester carbon in the earth and improve soil quality. The latest, Groundswell, came out this year, following 2020’s Kiss the Ground and 2023’s Common Ground. “It’s really about making some of these topics more accessible and engaging,” Turnbull said. Watch on Prime Video https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B0GQ522QBF . Art installation makes it easier to visualize sea level rise https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2026/09/art installation makes it easier to visualize sea level rise/ Staff picks: Our favorite climate books https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2026/09/staff picks our favorite climate books/ Inside the passage of America’s biggest climate law https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2026/09/inside the passage of americas biggest climate law/ Republish This Story Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license. Republish this article This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial NoDerivatives 4.0 International License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by nc nd/4.0/ . We love it when others republish our articles. Most of our content – other than images – is available to republish for free under a Creative Commons https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by nc nd/4.0/deed.en license CC BY NC ND 4.0 . Here’s what to do: by Sarah Wesseler, Yale Climate Connections September 14, 2026 Sarah Wesseler is a writer and editor with more than a decade of experience covering climate change and the built environment. Originally from Ohio, she now lives in Brooklyn. More by Sarah Wesseler https://yaleclimateconnections.org/author/sarahwesseler/