What is meaningful work on the way down? -

ONCE YOU KNOW a documentary film by

EMMANUEL CAPPELLIN

PULP FILMS

THE STORY In 1945, following the nuclear bomb Trinity test, Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Manhattan Project, turned to the sacred texts of the Bhagava Gita as he contemplated the collapse of modern civilization.  Today, like a ship entering the storm, the world faces climate change induced collapse. Once You Know, by director Emmanuel Cappellin, is a poetic and poignant exploration of how four of the world’s leading climate scientists and energy experts find truth, chaos, and hope in their work.

...THE STORY Through interviews that take him around our planet onboard a container-ship, Emmanuel, who previously worked on the world-release HUMAN, asks “What is meaningful work on the way down?”   This haunting question challenges everything he takes for granted – from growth-based democracies to personal freedoms – and ultimately brings him back home, in Saillans, his Alps mountain village, where meaningful work towards collective resilience and social justice begins. WATCH THE TEASER

TO MAKE THIS FILM, WORLD EXPERTS HERVÉ LE TREUT, RICHARD HEINBERG, SALEEMUL HUQ, AND SUSANNE MOSER HAVE BEEN FILMED OVER A THREE YEAR PERIOD.

HERVÉ LE TREUT Prominent French climatologist and IPCC lead-author, Hervé Le Treut is the Oppenheimer of climate science. He has been developing climate models, heading satellite data programs, and producing sensitive scientific information for 25 years. His specialty, clouds, could trigger a much-feared runaway effect on climate change. Through Hervé, we discover the invisible physics surrounding us, but also the courage and tenacity it takes to look at the Earth system as it it, with all its complexities and uncertainties. He embodies scientific lucidity – the first condition to effective action. MORE ABOUT HERVÉ

RICHARD HEINBERG

The American writer, thinker and Post Carbon Institute founder Richard Heinberg brings us to the intricate ties between climate change, energy depletion and economic growth. His books once laid on President Bill Clinton’s bedside table, and now, Richard claims renewables are essential but insuffisant to avert climate disaster. From his energy autonomous home, he speaks of economic disruption and draws the contours of a post-growth world. Richard personifies the courage of personal coherence – making radical choices of his own like not having children. His hard analysis, which has spurred the global Transition Towns movement, questions conventional no-need-to-sacrifice stories. MORE ABOUT RICHARD

SALEEMUL HUQ

Saleemul is an IPCC lead-author on climate change adaptation who knows his country Bangladesh will drown under monsoon floods, ice melts and rising seas. He likes to joke he is the world’s first climate refugee, but under his polite ways, Saleem is angry. He has been fighting alongside the 49 poorest countries to defend them at every single COP meeting over 21 years – since Kyoto. Yet, he is divided between the lengthy political process he belongs to and his desire to help his people on the ground today. Through him, we witness how justice will be essential to any concerted effort to sacrifice, but also question where the good fight is. MORE ABOUT SALEEMUL

SUSANNE MOSER

Susanne is a German IPCC author on vulnerability, risk, and disasters. Every day, the US-based researcher records another disaster in coastal cities due to rising sea levels. Following brilliant studies, the researcher she is, now feeling inadequate, facing depression, has transformed her public speeches. By combining IPCC reports with poetry and comic strip humor, her discourse is becoming increasingly more radical. She now warns audiences that revolutions are on the horizon. Through her, we witness human change – from inner change to the possibility of transformative social movements – but also come to understand why “Big History” could be the new collective myth that provides the courage and reasons to keep acting. MORE ABOUT SUSANNE

A WORD FROM THE DIRECTOR “I want to redefine the subject of climate change by bringing it home. To reframe the debate, my film breaks away from the duality of business-as-usual voices on one side – “there are no real solutions, do everything to postpone action!” – and climate activism voices on the other – “act now, worst impacts can still be avoided with current technological, behavioural, and/or political means!” Once you know questions both sides. It offers a third voice, trembling but true, to reach people who feel increasingly numb because, like my scientists, they have become lucid about false hopes.The film hints at places where true hope may remain through my characters’ search for personal and collective resilience. I believe that while climate chaos will inevitably worsen geopolitical tensions over resources and questions of justice, tensions will also be experienced internally, within each of us. This shared vulnerability could be key in the search for common ground and political courage and as our climate takes us into uncharted waters.”

PROJECT TIMELINE & PARTNERS • 2015-16 : Research, writing, and development • 2016-17 : Production (shots 75% completed) • 2017-18 (winter) : Finish production • 2018 (spring) : Post-production • 2019 (spring) : Film release

• CNC writing grant 2015 • CNC development grant 2016 • Auvergne-Rhônes-Alpes regional development grant 2017 • SFFILM Fiscal sponsorship Program 2017

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO SUPPORT OUR FILM WITH A TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATION, CLICK HERE SFFILM’s McBaine Fiscal Sponsorship program supports nonfiction filmmakers step-by-step through the process of getting their films funded, made, and seen. The fiscal sponsorship program provides SFFILM’s 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status to emerging and established documentary filmmakers,, as well as guidance on proposals, and fundraising strategy. SFFILM will send an acknowledgement letter for donations of $250 or more, in accordance with IRS regulations, stating the tax-deductible donation was received.

CREATIVE TEAM Emmanuel Cappellin

[producer, director & cinematographer] After growing up between France and the USA, Emmanuel began his career working for Oscar winning Canadian film animator and environmentalist Frederic Back. Now a regular cinematographer for French director Yann Arthus-Bertrand, he has shot and directed hundreds of interviews for Climate voices (2009, France5) and more recently for HUMAN, a worldwide theater release which premiered at the United Nations Headquarters, was broadcasted internationally, distributed in partnership with the Google Foundation, and selected at the 2015 Venise Mostra. Emmanuel produced and directed several short and medium formats about global environmental issues, and notably Thoughts and Reflections (2010), a feature-length on the current power shift from West to East. In 2007, he edited Jodie Martinson’s To The Tar Sands selected at the Vancouver DOXA and Calgary International Film Festivals. Currently an associate at Pulp Films, he is producing Once You know with all of his faith, time and energy.

Malik Menaï [co-producer France] Malik is producer at Narratio Films, a production company based in Paris, France, in partnership with Maurice Ribière and Audrey Ferrarese. Together, they accumulate 50 years of experience and have delivered over a hundred hours of programs screened in theatres, television, and the web. Narratio films is passionate about questioning society, unveilling history and popularizing science. Malik Menaï’s last film, I’m the people was selected in Cannes 2015 and won a string of more than 30 international awards.

Justine Shapiro [co-producer USA] Justine is an Oscar nominated, Emmy Award winning documentary filmmaker, and an on-camera television host, born in South Africa and raised in Berkeley, California. Justine co-directed and co-produced Promises, which received two Emmy Awards and an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary. Justine directed and produced Our Summer in Tehran, which premiered at IDFA in Amsterdam and on PBS in the USA in 2011. She hosted the award-winning PBS travel series GlobeTrekker, interviewing hundreds of locals from all walks of life in 40 countries. More recently Justine hosted Time Team America, a PBS series exploring archeology in the USA.

Amir Soltani [project advisor]

Joel Pincosy [project director] Joel is an independent filmmaker and producer whose films have screened at festivals around the world. A Berkeley Film Foundation Grant winner for his award winning film Goatherder about sustainable lifestyles in urban centers, he believes stories are key to changing the hearts and minds of people to solve the world’s material and spiritual problems. He recently finished the documentary My Paintbrush Bites about art and animal rehabilitation. He has extensive experience in directing and producing for television including hit series for Investigation Discovery, Discovery channel and Science, as well as short films, web series and music videos.

Amir is an Iranian-American writer, journalist, and the Emmy-nominated producer and director of Dogtown Redemption, a documentary film about West Oakland’s recyclers, broadcasted on PBS’s Independent Lens in 2016.  The film earned accolades for its innovative and collaborative approach. A human rights activist, Amir is also the author of Zahra’s Paradise, a graphic novel on Iran’s 2009 elections.  His bestselling graphic novel was nominated for two Eisner Awards, translated into 16 languages, and has become a global multi-media phenomenon.  It has been covered by dozens of news outlets including the Economist, CNN, the New York Times, Der Spiegel, BBC, Jakarta Times and others.  Amir studied social and intellectual history at Tufts and Harvard.

STILL WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT ONCE YOU KNOW AND TALK TO EMMACONTACT NUEL CAPPELLIN HOW Still want ON to know more YOU CAN about Once You Know and talk HELP US? to Emmanuel Cappellin on how you can help us? Please feel free to contact:

Anne-Marie Sangla [editor] Anne-Marie has passionately edited theater and television documentaries for over twenty years. She is convinced that if films can’t change the world, they certainly can help us question our place in it. That is why she loves to assist politically engaged directors in fulfilling their creative vision – on film topics ranging from social issues to arts. She most recently worked as chief editor on Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s worldwide theater release HUMAN (Venise Mostra 2015) as well as François Bertrand’s 70 mm Imax success I, Vincent Van Gogh (Géode Grand Prize 2009, GSCA Award for best Imax film and best educational film), as well as several dozens documentary series for French TV networks such as Canal+, Arte, France2, France3 and France5.

Vanessa Portois Wermter Outreach & Fundraising Apropos SF - (415) 254-5024 [email protected]

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO CONTACT: VANESSA PORTOIS WERMTER OUTREACH & FUNDRAISING APROPOS SF - (415) 254-5024