User:Adela Pickles/Sandbox5

Release
The Age of Stupid is to premiere at the Sunny Side of the Doc International Documentary Festival at La Rochelle, France, 24-27 June 2008.

Plot
This ambitious drama-documentary-animation hybrid stars Pete Postlethwaite as an old man living in the devastated world of 2055, watching "archive" footage from the present day and asking: why didn't we stop climate change while we still had the chance? The action weaves together six real human stories from around the world and examines the stark questions facing us all.

Jeh is an airline owner in India whose aim is to move even the poorest of his countrymen from the trains to the skies. After all, why shouldn't Indians consume like Europeans? But can economics expand indefinitely? And how much CO2 does each flight emit?

Layefa, a Nigerian trainee doctor living in Africa's richest oil region, sees many children dying from lack of clean water. Does oil extraction have to cause so much suffering? Where did all the oil money go?

Al the Hurricane Katrina hero is a paleontologist who thinks the devastation caused in his home city of New Orleans is just a taste of what is to come if we continue to "burn up" our most valuable resource. Would an intelligent species destroy its only home? Does global warming increase the ferocity of hurricanes?

Fernand is an 82-year old mountain guide from the French Alps who has seen his beloved glaciers melt by more than 150 metres over his long lifetime. 3000 lorries "taking French potatoes to Italy and bringing them back as mash" drive past his house every day. Does more consumption increase happiness?

Jamila and Adnan were only 5 and 6 when their father was killed and their home destroyed by a missile on the second day of the Iraq war. Now refugees in Jordan, they make a living on the streets selling second-hand American shoes. Is the war in Iraq about oil? Are cheap holidays really more valuable than human life? Where will hundreds of millions of climate change refugees go?

Piers from Cornwall thinks wind turbines are "the foot soldiers, the pioneers" of a more intelligent energy system based on massively reducing energy consumption. However, his plans for a wind farm have been repeatedly blocked by his neighbours who have no intention of letting him spoil their views. But does enough oil remain to build a new society to run without it once supplies have been used up?