The Age of Stupid

The Age of Stupid is a 2009 British docufiction film directed by Franny Armstrong, with first-time producer Lizzie Gillett. The executive producer is John Battsek. The film is a drama-documentary-animation hybrid. It combines documentary footage from 2008 with Pete Postlethwaite portraying a man living alone in a devastated world of 2055, who asks "Why didn't we stop climate change when we had the chance?" The makers of The Age of Stupid were among the first to use the crowdfunding model and pioneered a new distribution system, Indie Screenings. It premiered simultaneously on 62 screens across the UK in March 2009, making it a record holder for the largest ever film premiere. Critical reception was generally positive, with reviews commending its message and format. Plot In 2055, the world has been ravaged by catastrophic climate change; London is flooded, Sydney is burning, Las Vegas has been swallowed up by desert, the Amazon rainforest has burnt up, snow has vanished from the Alps, and nuclear war has laid waste to India. An unnamed archivist (Pete Postlethwaite) is entrusted with the safekeeping of humanity's surviving store of art and knowledge. Alone in his vast repository off the coast of the largely ice-free Arctic, he reviews archival footage from back "when we could have saved ourselves", trying to discern where it all went wrong. Amid news reports of the gathering effects of climate change and global civilisation teetering towards destruction, he alights on six stories of individuals whose lives in the early years of the 21st century seem to illustrate aspects of the impending catastrophe. They include Indian entrepreneur Jeh Wadia establishing low-cost airline GoAir, the oldest hiking guide in Chamonix discussing glacial retreat, a doctor in Nigeria whose community has been impacted by the petroleum industry, a Shell employee whose home was destroyed in Hurricane Katrina, a family of refugees fleeing the Iraq War and a British wind power developer facing backlash to potential projects.