‘To the End’ Review: A Documentary About Trying to Change the Systems Enabling Climate Change
variety.comDennis Harvey Film CriticUnstoppable force meets immovable object in “To the End.” Rachel Lears’ documentary inspires in its portrait of youthful activists organizing to push impactful climate-change policies into American political reality — and exasperates in the resistance with which that urgent quest is greeted on both sides of the entrenched-power aisle.
Covering several years of fast-moving events, this Sundance premiere is too exclusively U.S.-focused to be particularly viable for offshore programmers, but its topicality should stir sales interest on home turf.Like the director’s last feature “Knock Down the House,” about the 2018 Congressional election, this one also throws a spotlight on New York state candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Her successful bid for a House of Representatives seat greatly encouraged other progressives, for whom she is seen now as their principal “inside” ally — as well as conservatives’ preferred target tor outrage on nearly any subject.
But the principals here are a lower-profile trio of women involved in organizations aggressively agitating for the transformational changes proposed in the Green New Deal sponsored by Ocasio-Cortez (alongside Massachusetts’ Ed Markey).
Read more on variety.com
