New documentaries follow two figureheads of the environmental movement

By R.D.

GRETA THUNBERG (pictured) is huddled in the bowels of a racing yacht that is carrying her from Britain to America. As water crashes into the boat, the teenage activist speaks into her phone, recording the journal that she is too seasick to write by hand. “I don’t want to have to do all this. It’s too much for me,” she says, her voice tired and her speech halting. “I know that this is important, and what’s at stake. But it’s such a lot of responsibility.”

“I Am Greta” follows Ms Thunberg, a Swedish schoolgirl and climate campaigner, over the course of one extraordinary year. Nathan Grossman, who directs, was a novice film-maker who decided to capture Ms Thunberg’s solitary protests outside the Swedish parliament in 2018. “I thought it would be a three-week shoot,” he has said, a “few minutes in a short, arty film about child activists”. Twelve months later, and he was still recording as she arrived in New York—by boat, as she will not fly on account of the emissions—for the United Nations Climate Summit. In the intervening time, the “Fridays for Future” school strikes had taken off, galvanising young people around the world to demand action on climate change. Ms Thunberg had become the face of this movement and was invited to speak at rallies and conferences across Europe. Her father and Mr Grossman followed in her wake.