A group of kids from around the world packed into a bio-fueled school bus for a trip across Europe. But this wasn’t just for sightseeing. The eight children were chosen from a thousand who applied. All of them care deeply about climate change and have ideas about what to do about it.
Their journey was captured by Australian-based filmmaker Damon Gameau for his film "Future Council." It's playing at the Milwaukee Film Festival.
“One is a young boy from Bali in Indonesia and he's only 11. But he's been very concerned about the plastics in his waterways in the river systems there," Gameau says. "So he set up a company called Joseph's Recycling where he collects plastics and turns them into useful household items and he's got about 100 different clients."
Joseph's profit goes to help children who otherwise could not go to school.
“They're not doing it for any other reasons other than they genuinely care. And they were the eight children in particular we cast. So all of them had their own unique superpower in different ways,” Gameau says.
Another cast member is Skye Louise from Wales, “whose town, Fairbourne, is the first to sort of be inundated by floodwaters of the Western world, and so they're all going to have to move out of their village in the next 20 years or so,” Gameau says.
Skye Louise and her fellow Future Council travelers were fearless as they made stops along the way to sit down with corporate leaders.
“Tat was fascinating to watch, and just the depth of their understanding or their insights,” Gameau says. “They just hold a moral barometer for these people who suddenly think about their own children or their own grandchildren in a way that they don't when they're just in that corporate veneer.”
Gameau says roadtripping across Europe with the children was both delightful and profoundly moving.
“Some of them would get very emotional with the frustration of why adults aren't doing more for their future," Gameau says. "This is a future they're gonna have to live in: an ocean's full of plastic or pollution in the air, destruction of wildlife. That's a world they're going to inhabit and they just can't understand why we're not acting faster."
The film reinforces the fact that all of humanity is part of — not separate from — nature.
“We've built a whole civilization on a belief or a story that we're separate and superior to nature. So you see it manifest everywhere. And I think the only way we've got any sort of chance to correct what we've done is to actually embed nature back in and use nature design thinking, biomimicry,” Gameau continues. “So, I really wanted to get across to the children that we've been growing without wisdom. So how do we incorporate wisdom back into this growth model so we can consider nature? We can value human beings again. We can look at more equitable distribution of all the beautiful things that humans create.”
The project has grown beyond the film itself.
“It was probably halfway through the film, one of the young girls says, 'We know there are other children like us around the world in classrooms everywhere, but there's no outlet for them to express or contribute their ideas. Can we set up some kind of real life future council?'” Gameau recalls.
Future Council, a youth-led organization was born.
“We've got a youth CEO. We've got twelve strong children from [ages] 14 to 20 from all around the world that helped with the decision-making, ([including] which companies we work with."
Gameau says adults are there to support, not direct the group.
“What's terrific is every sort of five or six weeks, we have a global meet up and we get children from all around the world signing up," Gameau says. "They sit on there with their friends or their siblings or mum and dad, and we have a presentation from one of the children on an area they're passionate about, and just to watch them find this sanctuary amongst the chaos — is one of the most heartening things of all the things that the Future Council is. It's just a new tribe of children — passionate children — that's growing and forming and getting stronger."
Gameau believes the children can be a potent force for change.
You can watch "Future Council" at the Milwaukee Film Festival on Saturday, April 25 at 10:30 a.m. at the Oriental Theater. Milwaukee Film is a financial supporter of WUWM.
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