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Australian documentary 2040 is the calming film to see if you're anxious about climate change.

No one wants to read another story about climate change.

We don’t want to watch another documentary about it, or hear it discussed on the news.

It’s overwhelming and alarming and makes us all feel just a little bit sick.

The sea levels are rising and the animals are dying and there are more natural disasters than ever before and the world is on its last legs and there is no one to blame but ourselves.

Why would anyone want to sit with that feeling?

They don’t. So a man named Damon Gameau, the creator of critically acclaimed documentary That Sugar Film, had an idea.

What if he was able to create a vision of what the world could look like by 2040, if we embraced the solutions that already exist and set them in place. Right now.

“I wanted to give people something to fight for instead of something to fight against,” Gameau told Mamamia. And that’s why he made the new documentary, 2040. 

You can watch the trailer for 2040, right here. Post continues.

Video by Madman Films

The award-winning film maker and actor, who you might recognise from Love My Way, calls it “fact-based dreaming”, which means everything in the film is being implemented somewhere in the world right now. He’s not making it up. He’s not making false promises.

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“It’s not like we’re waiting for some technology or some invention to happen,” Gameau said. “We just need the motivation and the leadership and the political will. But it’s actually all there.”

Gameau wanted viewers to see that the damage we’ve done to our planet can actually be reversed.

“Our kids are losing hope. They need to know that there are people who care, and there are people who are working diligently to try and give us a better future. It’s going to take a lot of work, but we can do this.”

As Buckminster Fuller puts it, cited in a description of the film, “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

The film is structured as a visual letter to Gameau’s four-year-old daughter, who he shares with wife Zoe Tuckwell-Smith, best known for her role in Winners and Losers. 

Damon Gameau with wife, Zoe Tuckwell-Smith. Image via Getty.
Damon Gameau with wife, Zoe Tuckwell-Smith. Image via Getty.
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"You start to see things beyond your own little bubble when you have a child," he told Mamamia, which was also his impetus behind That Sugar Film.

He found the discussion around climate change increasingly intangible, and asked himself: "Why can't I finish these articles?"

After speaking to neuroscientists and looking at the research on the effect doomsday narratives have on our psychology, Gameau concluded: "I think people do care, they deeply care, they just don't want to click on those stories because they don't know what to do about it."

As part of the film, a network has been built called: What's your 2040?

You can go onto a specially made website (www.whatsyour2040.com) and put in details about yourself like what your specific interests are, how much money you have to spare and how much time. The website will tell you what you can do as an individual to make a real difference.

Change happens when individuals get together and demand it.

The innovation already exists.

And 2040 is all about what's possible for our future if every single one of us made the planet our first priority, today.

2040 is available on streaming services and on DVD and Blu-Ray.