"If the Maldives can reduce carbon emissions by 100%, why do the rest of the world struggle to do 10%?" Even though it's a little warmer and less statistical than An Inconvenient Truth, The Island President's message still doesn't sugar coat the impending doom: continue with these high levels of CO2 emissions and in ten years there will be no Maldives.
Sea levels are rising. Islands are slowly disappearing. Fish stocks have depleted. No one is listening to the warnings. It's like the beginning of a Roland Emmerich movie, but this is the fate of the island nation of the Maldives, a cluster of some 2000 islands in the Indian Ocean and holiday destination of the rich. After returning his country to democracy after thirty years of Maumoon Abdul Gayoom's despotic control, under whose rule Nasheed was imprisoned and tortured, the diminutive president is faced with his greatest battle: the survival of his country (that sounds like a Roland Emmerich movie too). The Island President documents his efforts to get the world to reduce the world's carbon emissions in the run up to the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in 2009.
Where An Inconvenient Truth was an interesting and shocking lecture turned into a documentary, its university presentation style wasn't the most cinematic. The Island President doesn't suffer from such problems - having a charismatic and pleasant man front and centre and glorious shots of his beautiful island home helps a lot too. This is a bit of a love-in, though, as Jon Shenk skims over the dissention in Nasheed's ranks and protests at home, as that would cast a shadow on the saintly portrait director has drawn for Nasheed.
In an effort to not to bum out its audience and send them from the cinema on a high, documentaries like these usually end with a flicker of hope and The Island President is no different, which is surprising. Nasheed's Copenhagen campaign is offset by compromises here and there and leaves with little other than awareness of the problem and a 'recommendation' for carbon reduction - a far cry than the goal Nasheed had in mind. Yet, Shenk portrays this as a victory. Odd.
A consistently surprising and entertaining documentary, this at the very least will raise awareness for the cause.