Directors/Producers: Betsy Hershey, Emma Wall

Description:

The film follows Michael Greenberg, a brazen visionary and founder of Climate Defiance, a disruptive youth movement. In the tradition of Gandhi’s Satyagraha, the Civil Rights Movement and ACT UP, they use radical nonviolent direct action to jolt society awake, calling out Big Oil, corporate CEOs and the politicians who enable them. The film charts a motley, idealistic crew improvising, failing, regrouping and pushing on to protect the planet. As they press forward, the film’s propulsive soundtrack is not background but fuel, with Chappell Roan, Doechii and Billie Eilish pushing the pace and sharpening the stakes for a generation with no room to fail.

Biography:

Betsy Hershey is a filmmaker and musician whose work moves between storytelling and song. In her documentary work she has explored Indigenous maternal health in Mexico, migration in the United States and the Mind & Life Institute’s ongoing dialogues with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala. Hershey co-directed the documentary Guerrilla Habeas, which premiered at Telluride in 2022 and later aired as part of Trevor Noah’s The Turning Point. She executive produced Pavements, an experimental music documentary which premiered at the Venice Film Festival. She has also created video art with her music that aims to encourage voting, highlight prisoners of conscience and confront the realities of climate change. In the spirit of Joan Baez, she treats art as a form of action, holding fast to her words that action is the antidote to despair.

Emma Wall is a Danish-American filmmaker and child psychiatrist whose work searches for the human center inside overwhelming systems. Her early career took her from the Los Angeles foster care system to refugee camps in Greece and India, to hospitals in Kyrgyzstan and South Africa. As global crises deepened, Emma turned to filmmaking as a way to respond. Documentary became a tool not only to observe but to intervene, offering new ways to engage with the urgent and complex challenges shaping our time. Her work confronts issues at the intersection of mental health and human rights, from forced displacement to climate collapse. She is drawn to subjects who find meaning inside chaos and who refuse to give up on hope. 

Contact Information:

e: emma@guesthouseproductions.com 
w: www.justlookupdoc.com