When the French actress Melanie Laurent read a now famous 2012 paper by leading scientists warning that the Earth’s climate was reaching a tipping point from which it may never recover, she sat down and wept. “I was pregnant, and I was so shocked I spent the whole day crying,” she said, wondering what kind of world she was bringing her child into. But instead of succumbing to fatalism, Laurent — best known for her role in Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” — went looking for the positive. With study after study confirming the dire warnings by experts about the state of the biosphere, Laurent and her friend Cyril Dion felt people needed hope.
“Demain” (Tomorrow), their feelgood film about how the world can change for the better — and the inspirational farm, energy and educational pioneers who are pointing the way — has had cinema audiences on their feet.
More than a million people have so far flocked to see it in France alone, where it won the Cesar — or “French Oscar” — for the best documentary of the year.
