I am Greta, review of the documentary on blu-ray

I am Greta

I am Greta - A Force of Nature is a 2020 documentary directed by Nathan Grossman and tells the life of the young Swedish activist, Greta Thunberg. Presented at the seventy-seventh Venice Film Festival last year, the blu-ray film is distributed in Italy by Koch Media, in a special edition that you can purchase at this link. The documentary follows the story of the young Swedish activist around the world and her relationship with people, with her family and with power in general. A dive into recent history so as not to forget the struggles that began before this COVID-19 pandemic and which, for now, are suspended, just like the demonstrations in the streets for Friday for Future, the youth movement of which Greta is the inspiration.

The story of I am Greta

The documentary on Greta Thunberg is a real one-to-one confrontation with the young environmentalist known all over the world, as promoter of the youth movement Friday for Future, which until 2020 involved students from all over the world. We all know Greta's story a little bit, but the documentary also manages to show us the most intimate and familiar part of her life, her relationship with her parents and living with Asperger's syndrome.

We follow Greta take her first steps in Sweden, demonstrating in front of the parliament building to ensure that climate issues can be taken seriously. It was 2018 and no one was talking about the Friday strikes carried out by this young woman with braids and her stern face, except the local press. In this regard, the director Grossman says, in the special contents of the blu-ray edition, that he became interested in the story through word of mouth, that everything was still in progress when he himself found Greta's story curious. If curious is not the right term, we could say ambitious, for a girl of only fifteen who, out of the blue, finds herself fighting against the powerful of the world up to the iconic speech given during the Climate action summit.

The images of this documentary which, according to many, has already become a classic that tells an important cross-section of our contemporary history, are truly powerful. They show a girl initially alone, also denigrated by her schoolmates as “strange”, unconventional. A young woman who, little by little, manages to fight her fear of relating to others, because the strength of her ideas is more important than any limit that our mind can raise. That of the young director Nathan Grossman is a challenge to today's society, he showed the "real" Greta in the transition from yesterday to today, from how she started to what she became, a source of inspiration for many young people who, however, awakens also many inferences.

The film I am Greta is also talking about this and it does so in the first person, passing through the testimonies of young environmentalists like her who, around the world, have become spokespersons for Friday for Future. The documentary also shows the importance of political action in support of environmental initiatives, in fact there are many well-known faces that we will find in the story of Greta narrated by Grossman.

The contents of a special edition

The Koch Media blu-ray edition has special physical contents: it is made up of a series of photographs of the director of Greta, printed on rigid cardboard and a small booklet that contains an interesting interview with Nathan Grossman who explains the reasons that led him to start the film. In addition to this, the file also contains the biographies of the technicians who contributed to the making of the feature film about the Swedish activist. On the other hand, however, the disc does not contain extras, but only the promotional trailer.

Among all, the booklet, of just over twenty pages, is certainly the most interesting part since it expresses, through the words of author, the peculiarity of a historical figure like Greta and why it was important to make a film about her experience as an activist. The author has followed the young woman since her first steps, when no one was talking about her, but, quoting Grossman's words:

"suddenly the movement began to spread to other parts of Sweden, then it spread to Finland and Denmark. We had been shooting for a month when I told her I wanted to work on it full time to see if it could become a film about movement or about her ”.

The film, continues the director, is certainly a film about Thunberg but also about Friday for Future, since the two indivisible things, two sides of the same coin, and it took someone with the courage of Greta to stir consciences , even those of the powerful. The file also talks about the consequences of COVID-19 on the movement and how much it has totally canceled the demonstrations in the student square. According to Grossman, however, these will start again stronger than before since after the pandemic, young people will have the strength to realize how much money will be allocated to get out of the crisis. Capital that before 2020 politics would not even have thought of investing for the future of the planet.