Doco paints both bleak and invigorating picture

DIRECTOR Franny Armstrong (McLibel) has made a passionate documentary about global warming that is an odd combination of the bleak and the invigorating.

Its patchwork narrative combines a fictional premise - a future in which signs of life exist only in an archive - with some urgent, uncompromising warnings about the necessity to change our ways now, before it's too late.

And there is something hopeful, despite everything, conveyed by brief yet complex portraits of individuals whose lives are affected by the world's avidity for consumption. They include an alpine guide in his 80s; a young Nigerian woman who dreams of being a doctor; two Iraqi children, now refugees in Jordan; a British wind farm developer; an Indian entrepreneur launching a budget airline; and a New Orleans palaeontologist who works for Shell.