Don’t Look Up
The recent Netflix film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Cate Blanchett, Meryl Streep and Ariana Grande is a commentary on the climate change that is happening at a rapid speed. It revolves around a giant comet approaching earth. The scientists take note and warn the government to take measures to divert the direction of the approaching comet. However, the government chooses to ignore and plans to capitalise on the development. This eventually leads to mass destruction on the planet.

The Day After Tomorrow
The 2004 film starring Jake Gyllenhaal is one of the most successful and popular films on climate change. In the film, climatologist Jack Hall played by Dennis Quaid is not taken seriously by UN officials when he puts forward his concerns for the environment. However, his studies prove to be true when a huge tornado develops, setting off a series of natural disasters around the world. The film is based on the 1999 book The Coming Global Superstorm written by Whitley Strieber and Art Bell. The film shows extreme cold weather conditions after the storm and thousands of deaths caused by the natural disaster. In the end, astronauts look down upon earth’s changed landscape that looks white as ice sheets spread across the northern hemisphere.

Interstellar
The post-apocalyptic film that was released in 2014 stars Matthew McConoughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain and Mackenzie Foy. Directed by Christopher Nolan, the film has a team of explorers finding a new home for humanity in order to save it from crop blights and dust storms that threaten survival. Then begins the process to transport humans and ensure life and survival on three new possible home planets. The film won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects at its 87th edition.

Waterworld
The 1995 film stars Kevin Costner. The post-apocalyptic film is directed by Kevin Reynolds and is based on Peter Rader’s original 1986 screenplay. Set in future, it shows how the polar ice caps have completely melted causing the sea levels to dangerously rise and cover the land. At that time, it was the most expensive film ever made. It is set in the year 2500 and shows how every continent of the world is underwater and the remnant human population lives in floating communities and have forgotten about ‘dry lands’.

Hell
Hell is a 2011 post-apocalyptic film in which three people Marie, Phillip and Leonie are driving through the destruction in Germany after a climate crisis has caused catastrophe. They scavenge for water and supplies to keep alive. Later, they are kidnapped by a farmer family to be used as a source of food. The survival drama is all about how the social order has failed after the climate crisis has destroyed society. Survivors attack each other for food and supplies and the sun outside is so hot that the crops have been destroyed and it is dangerous to be outside.

Soylent Green
The 1973 ecological dystopian thriller by Richard Fleischer stars Charlton Heston, Leigh Taylor-Young and Edward G Robinson. It is about an investigation into the murder of a businessman and a dystopian future wherein oceans are drying and there is year-round humidity. It shows how the greenhouse effect is causing pollution, overpopulation, poverty and depletion of resources. Incidentally, it talks about the year 2022 when overpopulation, pollution and climate change have caused food, water and housing shortages and the gap between the rich and the poor has widened.

Aral, the Lost Sea
The 2010 documentary is a portrayal of how human greed and intervention can alter the course of climate and cause destruction. The Aral Sea, between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, dried up completely in the 2010s and is considered one of the greatest environmental disasters in history. In order to grow cotton, the government of the former Soviet Union ordered the construction of a 500 km-long canal that would take a third of the water from the Amu Darya River for irrigating land, between 1954 and 1960. The increasing need for water gradually caused the Aral Sea to dry up. Almost all of its reservoirs and wetlands and more than 50 lakes near the region have dried up too.