Independent Film Spotlight: Future Weather

How a 13-year-old is giving Al Gore a run for his money, or why indie is alive and well.

Video week continues with something from the depths of indie: Future Weather, a sweet coming-of-age film about the relationship between environmentalism and social hardship — a brilliant addition to our earth-centric essential viewing recommendations.

Laduree is a 13-year-old girl who, in the midst of a forestry experiment, realizes she has to take action to save her hometown from global warming. Except in the process of this epiphany, she gets abandoned by her mother. Tossed over to her grandmother, she is thrown into a depressed rural community.

As Laduree faces her uncertain future, she reimagines her life as a public service announcement, translating her own reality of family struggles into our collective one of environmental apocalypse — a compellingly fresh angle on the sustainability dialogue, if we ever saw one.

Future Weather, from Philadelphia-based duo Jenny Deller and Kristin Fairweather, is a finalist in the Netflix Find Your Voice competition. It is also the winner of Showtime’s Tony Cox Screenwriting Award. Production — sustainable by design — is slated for this fall, with the film set to hit theaters next year.

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