3 months ago
23
FUTURE COUNCIL
81 Minutes
In cinemas August 7
Reviewed by Sandra Hall
★★★★
In Future Council, a rather heavy silence falls on the conversation when 12-year-old Skye Neville tells a highly placed Nestle executive that he’s a disgrace for defending the company’s use of plastic packaging.
It takes him a moment to recover but by the end of the exchange, he’s admitting big companies such as his can lose sight of their place in “the wider eco-system”.
Skye comes from a Welsh village built on a coastal flood plain, which puts her on climate change’s frontline, and she went through a very early conversion to activism, setting up a campaign against plastic use in children’s comics and magazines.
The youngsters tour Europe trying to meet with leaders of some of the biggest corporations there.Credit:
Now she’s on the Future Council – the fiercest of eight teens and sub-teens gathered by Australian documentary maker Damon Gameau, whose career as an activist began with That Sugar Film. A critical look at the effects of sugar on the human body, it made news because he doused himself in sweetness by way of proving his point.
He moved on to climate control, taking his 2019 documentary, 2040, into schools, and the kids he met there became the inspiration for Future Council. He found that many knew more about sustainability than most adults. And a thousand of them auditioned for the film, in which the successful candidates cross Europe in a yellow bus meeting fellow activists and do their best to get audiences with the senior executives of some of the world’s biggest polluters.
To its credit, Nestle was one of the few of these to say yes. Another was multinational Dutch bank ING, whose chief executive seems amused at the start of his interview with the group. His response is friendly but predictably measured. He says the bank has stopped investing in coalmines and stepped away from other clients that aren’t divorcing themselves quickly enough from fossil fuels but the rest can’t be done overnight.
Loading
It sounds reasonable but it doesn’t quite satisfy young Dutch boy Joaquin Minana, who’s leading the charge. Backed up by the others, he asks if ING would consider having young people on its board or at least taken on as advisers. It’s an idea that will keep recurring as the bus trip goes on, and by the time we’ve got to know these kids, it seems like a pretty good idea.
Joaquin was born deaf but a Cochlear implant fixed that and he’s now an accomplished debater as well as becoming fluent in several languages. Eleven-year-old Joseph Wijaya from Bali sells recycled gifts and toys at his local market and donates the proceeds to a fund putting children through school.
Hiva Tuki Grube lives on Norfolk Island and has become an eloquent advocate for the protection of birdlife. Karla Alberjerg, who’s Danish but lives in Uganda, worries about the textile waste from fast fashion.
Aurvi Jain from Singapore is both a chess champion and an organiser of beach clean-ups. Clemence “CC” Currie, the youngest, is a Scot and another proponent of beach clean-upsm and Ruby Rogers, Jimmy Barnes’ granddaughter, is a singer and songwriter whose music runs through the film.
They’re an extraordinary bunch with such lively personalities that they save the film from being written off as worthy but boring with its relentless focus on just one issue. Admittedly, it’s one that is vital to all of us but preachiness does little to sell it. These kids avoid that pitfall with their humour and ability to look beyond the obvious.
The Booklist is a weekly newsletter for book lovers from Jason Steger. Get it delivered every Friday.
Most Viewed in Culture
Loading
