Rebellion
- 4 hours ago
- 3 min read
documentary helps us better understand the Extinction Rebellion movement
By Alberto Sclaverano
2021 British documentary film Rebellion by Maia Kenworthy and Elena Sánchez Bellot (also co-producers) offers a unique look inside the rise and spread of the Extinction Rebellion (ER) movement.
After the film premiere at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, it was released in the United Kingdom in 2022 and then, mainly through VOD platforms, in the rest of the world.
The two directors were nominated for the BAFTA Award (the British equivalent of the Academy Awards) for Outstanding Debut in 2023.
Born in 2018 in the UK, Extinction Rebellion (ER) quickly became a global phenomenon, and activists belonging to it are now recognized all around the world. But it is also one of the most criticized climate change-related social movements.
We all have in mind the peaceful, still often very provocative and problematic, actions made by its members. ER has engaged in traffic and road blocks as means to explicitly create discomfort and raise awareness about what they perceive as an enormous danger of an imminent ecosystem’s collapse, made possible due to the inability to effectively tackle the climate crisis.
These acts often led to the temporary arrests of young activists, and the movement itself acknowledges that it’s a way to increase the notoriety of their goals among common people and put climate change at the center of public debate.
Extinction Rebellion, due to these very drastic tactics, is also a frequent target of right-wing parties and climate change denialist groups. They denounce the link between climate activists and vandalism/violence, an element that ER has always denied.
So, this documentary, which covers the history of the movement from its foundation in the early 2020s, is useful to give us a deeper perspective on what ER truly is. Rebellion uses exclusive footage and several “behind the scenes” images taken from ER activities.
It also allows some of the most important figures inside the organization to speak and explain their point of view, including some of the co-founders. It helps us to understand what it means for young people who have become socially conscious about the climate crisis to take a step further and choose a radical form of activism, to the point of breaking the law.
For them, this is the most vital struggle of the century. While the film is clearly told in a way that’s sympathetic to the activists, it still leaves some questions to the spectator. The most controversial topic is the deliberate choice to use illegal means to achieve notoriety, which has split the movement itself. For example, in 2021 the more radical Last Generation was formed from a faction of Extinction Rebellion. Last Generation has even been open to carrying out actions against national monuments and works of art, and to implement harsher road blockages.
The two directors, with their style made of direct interviews and shooting “from the ground”, touch these themes during their conversations with activists. The outcome is a movie that acts as a useful provocation.
It asks the public to try to take, at least for 82 minutes, the point of view of these young women and men who literally see the world burn and, at the same time, perceive the complete incapacity of acting by governments and international institutions.
This is particularly evident in the part of the film that features British lawyer Farhana Yamin, a central figure in December 2015 Paris climate agreement.
That treaty was a potential milestone, but it was lethally weakened by the decision of the Trump administration to withdraw from it in 2026, after having already done so briefly at the end of the first term in 2020.
Rebellion is a recommended viewing less for the people who already support grassroots movements such as EX and more for the people who are skeptical about radical forms of protest, while still believing in the importance of fighting the climate crisis. It won’t necessarily change their views, but at least it will help them understand why a generation of young people are so afraid of what’s coming, to the point of being prepared to suffer direct and legal consequences for their actions.
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