Our Round-up of Climate Narrative Films 2025

As 2025 comes to a close, we've teamed up with our friends at Hollywood Climate Summit to bring you our round-up of narrative climate films this year! And we think it's save to say that you've probably watched more 'climate films' than you thought - sometimes obvious, sometimes hidden -  spanning all genres from drama, adventure, animation, sci-fi and more. These aren't apocalyptic disaster movies with the climate crisis as a villain, they're stories where climate is driving the plot, or, simply woven into the world the characters live in.  

OUR PICKS:

Train Dreams

Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton) is a logger in the early 1900s Pacific Northwest who spends his life felling ancient forests and building railroads, while wildfires and personal tragedy reshape everything around him. The film traces the origins of fire suppression policies that created today's megafire conditions, with characters voicing the spiritual cost of industrial extraction—a meditation on climate grief before that was a concept.

The Lost Bus

Based on the true story of the 2018 Camp Fire, a bus driver (Matthew McConaughey) and teacher (America Ferrera) work to save 22 children from a catastrophic CA wildfire. The film connects institutional negligence to climate-driven disaster, a theme that resonates in a year when we have experienced similar devastation in reality.

Lilo & Stitch

Grieving Lilo (Maia Kealoha) longs for connection after the loss of her parents, while her older sister Nani (Sydney Agudong) is thrust into the role of guardian. Their fierce protection of home and each other, rooted in Hawaiian concepts of ʻOhana and connection to place, offers a counter-narrative to displacement in an era when island communities face rising seas, climate crises, and outside pressures.

Jurassic World Rebirth‍

Five years after dinosaurs spread across the globe, Earth's climate has turned against them—most have died out, with survivors clustered in regions with Mesozoic conditions. Covert ops specialist Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) leads a team to extract DNA from the last giant dinosaurs for a pharmaceutical breakthrough only possible while they are in existence. As we watch these ancient creatures fail to survive a planet that's changed, we’re reminded that the world will adapt, but not all living things will.

Wicked For Good

Beneath the spectacle is a story about scapegoating—a government blames Animals for a devastating drought, stripping their rights and displacing them from society. It's an allegory for how those in power weaponize environmental crises against marginalized communities, making it surprisingly resonant as a climate justice parable.

Rebuilding

A Colorado rancher (Josh O'Connor) loses his family's land to wildfire and must move to a FEMA camp, while trying to piece together his life and relationship with his daughter. Director Max Walker-Silverman drew from his own family's experience with wildfire loss, crafting a story of healing through community and the resilience of people and land.

The Twits

This Roald Dahl adaptation turns its villains into climate profiteers, a nasty couple who've built their fortune exploiting a town after its lake vanished due to rapid environmental collapse. It's a kids' film that sneaks in pointed satire about who benefits when ecosystems fail.

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Sources:

https://press.disney.co.uk/news/first-look-at-avatar-fire-and-ash

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/james-cameron-avatar-fire-and-ash-motion-capture-evolution-1236428843/

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2025-07-28/avatar-3-trailer-fire-and-ash

https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/22/entertainment/wicked-for-good-politics-immigration

https://collider.com/wicked-movie-better-than-musical/

https://www.npr.org/2025/10/04/nx-s1-5558148/the-lost-bus-review

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Cover images:

Rebuilding (c) Courtesy of Bleecker Street
Train Dreams (c) Courtesy of Netflix
The Lost Bus (c) Courtesy of Apple TV+
Jurassic World Rebirth (c) Courtesy of Universal Pictures
The Twits (c) Courtesy of Netflix