A profound, personal exploration of what it means to wake up to the truth about climate change and its future impacts. Travelling the world on container ships to meet five of the world’s leading climate and energy experts, Once You Know asks ‘how can we live, love and dream in the face of what is coming?’

Today, like a ship entering the storm, industrial civilisation faces the first symptoms of energy depletion and climate change induced collapse. 

Once You Know asks the disturbing questions: Are there better ways of collapsing than others? What is meaningful work on the way down? Director Emmanuel Cappellin is obsessed with how to best respond personally and collectively.

Traveling on board a container ship, his quest leads him around the world to meet five of the world’s leading climate scientists and energy experts. They share with him the truth, chaos, and hope in their work. They allow him to challenge everything he took for granted – from growth-based democracies to personal freedoms.

This odyssey brings him back to himself and to Saillans, his small mountain village. In this life-size, open sky laboratory, where everything becomes once again possible: having a child, redefining questions of social justice, implementing participatory democracy, starting an energy transition…The first steps, perhaps, towards some kind of collective resilience.

*This film has been exempt from classification and is restricted to people over 15 years. People under 15 must be accompanied by an adult