The Message: The Revolutionary Power of Climate Change
Short film In Production
Director
Avi Lewis
Doc Society helped with
Development
Went to Good Pitch
THE MESSAGE is a multi-platform project that combines an award-winning team of storytellers, a provocative thesis that will change how we take on the climate crisis, a profoundly moving feature documentary, and an ambitious engagement strategy.
LONG SYNOPSIS
Based on ideas drawn from Naomi Klein’s forthcoming non-fiction book, The Message will show why the deep changes required to tackle climate change should not be viewed as a punishment to fear, but as a kind of gift. Climate change offers us a chance to solve the ecological and economic crises simultaneously, averting ecological chaos by changing an economic model that’s already in need of serious transformation. The world doesn’t need another climate film, it needs another kind of climate film. The Message offers a hopeful and transformative vision, combining an exploration of big ideas with inspiring front-line stories from communities around the world who are fighting climate change by reclaiming their economies.
Crew
Avi Lewis
Director
Avi Lewis is a veteran documentary filmmaker and television journalist. As host and producer for Al Jazeera English Television and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, he has reached a global audience, reporting from the US and around the world. His award-winning first documentary feature, The Take (2004), followed Argentina’s new movement of worker-run businesses. It premiered at the Venice Biennale and was released theatrically across North America and Europe. It has since been shown in factories where workers seek to emulate the Argentine model from Serbia to Johannesburg, Chicago to Cairo.
KEY MEMBERS OF THE TEAM
Writer
Naomi Klein is a journalist and the author of international bestsellers No Logo and The Shock Doctrine, each of which have sold more than a million copies and been translated into more than 25 languages. No Logo inspired a generation of young people to rethink the commercialization of their lives and commit themselves to building alternatives. The Shock Doctrine has helped inspire and focus a global wave of organizing against governments using crises to push forward inequitable and undemocratic policies, from Haiti to the UK.
Producer
Joslyn Barnes is a screenwriter and Emmy nominated producer. Among the films Barnes has executive produced or produced since co-founding Louverture Films with Danny Glover are the César nominated Bamako, Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner and Oscar and Emmy nominated Trouble the Water, the award-winning Black Power Mixtape, Bollywood thriller Dum Maaro Dum, Oscar shortlisted Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner The House I Live In, and the forthcoming Concerning Violence. She associate produced Elia Suleiman's The Time that Remains, and the 2010 Cannes Palme d'Or winner Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives by Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
Executive Producer
Director, screenwriter, producer and editor Alfonso Cuarón is a three-time Oscar® nominee and Golden Globe® winner who has helmed a wide range of acclaimed films, including Y Tu Mamá También, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Children of Men and Gravity. In 2007, he produced a documentary short based on Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine and looks forward to continuing the collaboration as an Executive Producer of The Message.
Executive Producer
Danny Glover. In addition to being one of the most acclaimed actors of our time, with a career spanning 30 years from Places in the Heart, The Color Purple, the Lethal Weapon series and the award-winning To Sleep with Anger, Danny Glover has also executive produced numerous projects for film, television and theatre. Among these are Freedom Song, Get on the Bus, Deadly Voyage, Buffalo Soldiers, The Saint of Fort Washington and To Sleep with Anger. The recipient of countless awards for his humanitarian and advocacy efforts on behalf of economic and social justice causes, Glover is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from Amnesty International.
Impact Producer
Katie McKenna is a producer with over a decade of experience in multi-platform content and strategy. Recent work includes the multiple-award-winning Inside Disaster, an educational website and interactive documentary about the Haiti earthquake and humanitarian work, and leading TV Ontario’s online contribution to the global Why Poverty? project, involving 70 broadcasters and reaching 500 million viewers around the world. She is the founder and principal of Working Knowledge, and co-producer of Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein’s 2004 documentary The Take.
