To the End
Synopsis
Stopping the climate crisis is a question of political courage, and the clock is ticking. To the End captures a historic shift in climate politics in the United States, through the interwoven narratives of four young women of color who are key players behind the Green New Deal.
The Filmmakers
Rachel Lears Director and Producer
Rachel Lears is a documentary director, producer and cinematographer based in Brooklyn, NY. Rachel's most recent feature documentary, Knock Down the House (Netflix), follows four women who ran insurgent congressional campaigns in 2018, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Cori Bush. The film won the US Documentary Audience Award and the Festival Favorite award at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, was shortlisted for an Oscar and is nominated for an Emmy in 2020. Her last feature, The Hand That Feeds (co-directed with Robin Blotnick; PBS), won numerous festival awards and was nominated for an Emmy in 2017.
Sabrina Schmidt Gordon Producer
Sabrina Schmidt Gordon is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and impact strategist from NYC. Her latest film, QUEST, is a New York Times Critic’s Pick and nominated for numerous awards including an Independent Spirit Award, a Peabody, and two Emmys. Sabrina’s directing debut was the Emmy-nominated BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez, which she co-directed, co-produced, and edited, winning the Best Film Directed by a Woman of Color award at the African Diaspora International Film Festival in 2016. She is also the co- producer and editor of DOCUMENTED, the story of Pulitzer Prize-winning undocumented journalist, Jose Antonio Vargas. In 2018, she was inducted into The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Robin Blotnick Producer and Editor
Robin Blotnick produced and edited the Netflix documentary Knock Down The House (winner of the US Documentary Audience Award and the Festival Favorite award at Sundance 2019) which follows four working class women who shook up the 2018 primary elections. His previous work as director and editor includes the award-winning documentaries The Hand That Feeds (2014, co-directed with Rachel Lears), about a bitter struggle for justice at a New York City bagel shop, and Gods and Kings (2012), about masks, magic and media in the Guatemalan highlands. His archival collage City of Movement is currently playing on infinite loop at the Museum of the City of New York.
Festivals & Awards
Sundance Film Festival
2022
The world is in crisis as it misses target after target to stop climate change. The Green New Deal has captured the imagination of millions with its visionary promise for systemic economic and environmental change that will build a better and more just world. In this moment of political upheaval with clashes in the streets and the halls of Congress, climate policy is taking center stage for the first time in American history, and the fight is on.
To the End goes behind the scenes of a social and political movement where young people reject the cynicism and complacency of a power structure that has failed to meaningfully address the existential threat we face. Director Rachel Lears (Knock Down the House) crafts an urgent coming-of-age story of a movement, told through the narratives of four instrumental young leaders and women of color — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Varshini Prakash, Alexandra Rojas, and Rhiana Gunn-Wright. As the future they will live in fast approaches, the last generation with a chance to end climate change is using their power and demanding a say in what that future will be.
Reviews
“Just as efforts to combat climate change go far beyond a single bill, so does To the End, its actual subject being not the fight for a single piece of legislation but the fight to maintain a sense of optimism and belief that society-level responses to climate change can still be mustered.”
“Inspires in its portrait of youthful activists organizing to push impactful climate-change policies into American political reality — and exasperates in the resistance with which that urgent quest is greeted on both sides of the entrenched-power aisle.”
“To The End shines a light on how progress on climate change will actually be made in a galvanizing film.”