The Age of Stupid (2009)

A future archivist looks at old footage from the year 2008 to understand why humankind failed to address climate change.

Director:

Franny Armstrong

Writer:

Franny Armstrong

Stars:

Pete Postlethwaite, Jehangir Wadia, Alvin DuVernay

1 nomination.

Cast

Credited cast:
Pete Postlethwaite	...	The Archivist
Jehangir Wadia	...	Himself (as Jeh Wadia)
Alvin DuVernay	...	Himself
Layefa Malini	...	Herself
Jamila Bayyoud	...	Herself
Piers Guy	...	Himself
Lisa Guy	...	Herself
Fernand Pareau	...	Himself
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Babou Ceesay	...	Himself (voice)
Toyah Frantzen	...	Dutch
Mark Lynas	...	Himself - Author, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet

Storyline

This ambitious documentary/drama/animation hybrid stars Pete Postlethwaite as an archivist in the devastated world of the future, asking the question: "Why didn't we stop climate change when we still had the chance?" He looks back on footage of real people around the world in the years leading up to 2015 before runaway climate change took place.

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Plot Keywords:

year 2008 | runaway climate change | manmade environmental disaster | f rated | year 2055 | 

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Taglines:

Why didn't we save ourselves when we had the chance?

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Genres:

Documentary | History | War

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Official Sites:

Official site Official site [Japan]

Country:

UK

Language:

English French

Release Date:

20 August 2009 (New Zealand)

Also Known As:

A Era da Estupidez

Filming Locations:

Cornwall, England, UK

Box Office

Budget:

£650,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

£101,752 (United Kingdom), 22 March 2009, Limited Release

Company Credits

Production Co:

Spanner Films

Technical Specs

Runtime:

92 min 89 min (European Film Market)

Color:

Color

Did You Know?

Trivia

The film takes place in 2055.

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Goofs

At the end of a timeline depicting the disasters Earth has to endure thanks to man's effect on global warming, an image of Earth is shown. Despite all talk of melting ice caps and rising sea levels, Earth's land mass looks exactly as it does when the film was made.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Archivist of the future: Welcome to the global Ark-ive, a vast storage structure located 800 km north of Norway. It contains the artwork from every national museum. There are pickled animals, stacked up, two by two; every film, every book, every scientific report, all stored on banks of servers. But the conditions we're experiencing now were actually caused by our behavior in the period leading up to 2015. In other words: we could have saved ourselves. We could have saved ourselves, but we didn't.

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Connections

Featured in Pauw & Witteman: Episode #4.11 (2009)

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Soundtracks

A Life in Ashes
Written by Lee Tibbetts, Andy Hutton & Paul Fowler
Performed by Dragnerve
Under License from Dragnerve

User Reviews

An interesting, though provoking film

Excellent film - a real wake-up call to all of us to think about the impact our lifestyles have on the environment, and the hypocrisy of the West in having enjoyed the lifestyles we have whilst dictating to those in countries like India and Africa that they should not be allowed to aspire to the same things.

As the contrasting points of view about the film on this site show...it certainly encourages debate, which can only be a good thing. It inspired me to want be part of the solution, rather than part of the problem, which is about as much as campaigning filmmaker can hope to achieve, isn't it?