What does it mean when you’re 20, you’re fighting to save the world, and a hunger strike is no longer enough? When the people whose future you are trying to rescue don’t really listen? When politicians don’t act and the police and legal systems over-react?
For the young militants of Letzte Generation – Germany’s most proactive climate organisation, known for disruptive-but-peaceful civil disobedience actions — these have become daily existential questions.
Lina, the 19-year-old made the headlines for endangering her own life with a three-week hunger strike in 2021, she also routinely glues herself to roads or paintings. For her civil disobedience remains key to increasing the pressure on the government and avoiding “the climate Catastrophe”. For her fellow campaigners Taura, Guerrero, Charly and Fuchs, this form of protest does not go far enough: other ways are needed.
Director Felix Maria Bühler follows his five protagonists up close for a whole year. He captures the intimate moments among friends, but also shows the difficulties that the activists face on a daily basis – from feelings of powerlessness, to violent abuse on the street, to criminal prosecution. How far are they prepared to go, where are their limits, in order to stand up for their ideals?
Don’t miss the after screening Q&A with Felix Maria Bühler for a most topical debate about the personal and political limits of grassroots political action in times of structural deadlock: How far can and should one go and the personal price the young militants are ready to pay for it. When you’re up against industrial lobbies and their climate denial factions and politicians are guided by opportunism, is radical action the only way to trigger a response? “Blowing up a pipeline” the only way to go?
