environment

Each January, as the Sundance Film Festival approaches, there’s a mad scramble among journalists and critics to pinpoint something, anything new to differentiate their articles from the ones they wrote last year—and usually they turn to the documentaries for their hook. One year it’s LGBT issues, another year it’s Iraq. This year, the festival’s 25th anniversary (well, since the Sundance Institute took over its management anyway), the popular “news hook” is the environment. By way of evidence, writers point to the number of environmental docs in competition this year: 5 out of 32 total. But I just looked at last year’s film guide and counted three environmental docs. From 3 to 5—not such a dramatic increase, is it?