SKEPTICS

A film by Ra’anan Alexandrowicz

LOGLINE

As the US dismantles decades of climate change legislation, an environmental activist strikes up an anonymous, online conversation with a climate skeptic. Shifting between the personal and scientific, can this dialog reveal any common ground?

PROJECT INTEL

Directed by Ra'anan Alexandrowicz (THE LAW IN THESE PARTS, Sundance World Cinema Grand Jury Prize in Documentary)

Produced by James Doolittle (PATRICE: THE MOVIE, Primetime Emmy Winner) and Thomas Lennon (xxxxxxxx)

Project Stage: Production

Intended Runtime: 75 minutes

Expected Release: Early 2027

Budget: XXXXXX

Secured: $170,000 (through a grant from Rutgers University)

All contributions are fully tax-deductible.

SAMPLE SCENE

The “Reaper” Conversation

FILMMAKER STATEMENT

SKEPTICS is a co-creation between an activist and a filmmaker. Together, we create a cinematic voice informed by an insider’s perspective on climate science and advocacy, as well as a filmmaker’s multi-decade experience exploring complicated themes and forms through cinema.    

In our film THE VIEWING BOOTH (2020) we explored a place ostensibly out of cinema’s reach - the experience of a viewer. In this project, we approach a more complicated space - the disembodied online interaction, which is how a substantial amount of contemporary human communication takes place. 

Public conversation and perception of the climate crisis is not separate from the crisis itself, but rather an essential part of it. In this film we address an uncomfortable question: why is a growing public rejecting climate science?

Before beginning the project, we had assumptions about what skeptics were like: people who were ill-informed, felt “othered” by our political and economic systems, or found a sense of community around hating a common enemy. Our online engagement with skeptics, however, exposed us to people who had scientific backgrounds and expressed a care for society and the environment in line with our own. This makes it even more complicated to understand the void of disagreement between “us” and “them”.

Climate skeptics’ arguments are not foreign to critical thinkers. They point out contradictions within the climate movement’s arguments, as well as the political and financial powers that underlie our systems of knowledge. They insist we treat climate science like a religion that can’t be questioned. One way to confront such arguments is to deem them, and those that voice them, disingenuous or cynical. But why should we consider skeptics less genuine or more cynical than we are? Can looking at the people who oppose our view teach us something about ourselves?