10 important climate change documentaries to watch this year

Likely best-known for taking home the prize for Best Documentary Feature at the 2021 Academy Awards, My Octopus Teacher follows a year in the life of filmmaker Craig Foster after he develops a friendship with a wild octopus. An oddly emotional 85 minutes, the film delves into ideas surrounding human relationships with nature and the very real connections that humans and animals can forge.

Possibly one of the most well-known films about climate change, in part due to Oscar winner Leonardo DiCaprio helming the project, Before the Flood takes its audience across multiple areas of the world to discuss the relationship between climate change and capitalism, bringing up the issue of carbon tax alongside deforestation and rising sea levels, and speaks directly to world leaders to encourage solutions for climate change.

In this 2021 film, directors Ludo and Otto Brockway address the problem of unsustainable meat consumption and its impacts on the environment. Specifically focusing on the consequences of overfishing, animal agriculture and deforestation, this documentary will likely change the way that you think about the food choices you make and hopefully inspire its audience to make some more sustainable choices when it comes to eating.

Credited for raising international awareness of global warming, a winner of two Academy Awards and frequently labelled as one of the best climate documentaries of all time, An Inconvenient Truth explores exactly what the title suggests – the truth of the future of our planet that is, perhaps, not the euphoria we'd all like to believe it is. Recounting Al Gore's (the former Vice President of the USA) campaign to educate American citizens about the dangers of climate change, the doc is just as relevant today as it was 20 years ago.

We couldn't go through this whole list without including one from Father Nature himself now, could we? In this 90-minute Netflix original, Attenborough gives an overview of his life and career as one of the most famous and impactful documentarians on this planet, narrating how life on Earth has changed since he was a child. Described as Attenborough's "witness statement", the film is not only visually stimulating, but also effective at showing Attenborough's fears for the future of the world if real change is not made.

Taking a look at the environmental ramifications of bushfires, specifically those that took place in the Australian wilderness in 2019-2020, Eva Orner's 2021 film Burning explores the causation and fallout of the fires from the viewpoints of those directly affected, as well as those trying to prevent such a catastrophic event from ever occurring again.

Throwing us directly into our uncertain future, 2040 is an Australian documentary directed by and starring actor Damon Gameau. In the doc, Gameau reimagines a world in which the climate crisis has been solved due to the use of technology. The film is a far more optimistic look at the future of our planet than many other environmentally focused documentaries, and offers its audience a positive spin on the climate crisis by providing us with some very possible answers to global warming, including renewable energy and regenerative architecture.

According to the synopsis of Deep Rising, the documentary "illuminates the vital relationship between the deep ocean and sustaining life on Earth", and who better to lead such a cause than Aquaman himself, Jason Momoa? In this film, Momoa examines and exposes organisations who have mined large amounts of metals from seabeds, and also explores the fragilities of the relationship between humanity and marine life.

Its name might be a bit of a mouthful, but Josh Fox's How to Let Go of the World is well worth your time. Recognising such events as natural disasters, global temperature increases, the melting in Iceland, the collapse of the ecosystem and so much more, the film offers a stark realisation that the world we live in is changing. Despite this, though, How to Let Go of the World is a film that offers hope for the future, while praising the beauty and fragility of the Earth, so long as it's not destroyed.