I Am Greta (2020)

(On Cable TV, November 2020) Perhaps the most amazing thing about sixteen-year-old Greta Thunberg’s rise to prominence as an outspoken environmentalist hasn’t been as much her full-throated interventions in the popular discourse, but seeing her opponents make fools of themselves by attacking her. With feature-length documentary I Am Greta, we get to spend a bit of time with her and her parents at the peak (so far) or her popularity, travelling from student protests in Oslo to New York City in a sailboat before addressing the United Nations. She gets ample time to address the camera in less structured settings, and we get to see some of the work that goes on in between those speeches. (Including, amusingly enough, her parents trying to hold her back a bit to make sure that she’s eaten enough and takes care of herself.) Even for casual followers of Thunberg, I Am Greta doesn’t break new ground or hold any striking revelations—she is her public persona, and the film is clearly not going to be anything less than fully sympathetic to her. Still, while I suspect that we are far from having heard the last from her, it’s a document of a particularly charged era in her life. Time will confirm how right she was and how misguided her opponents will continue to be.