How to Blow Up a Pipeline
Taut and timely thriller about a group of young activists who undertake a mission to blow up an oil pipeline. Based on the controversial book by Andreas Malm.
In the opening minutes of this film, a young woman punctures the tires of an SUV, leaving behind a note that bluntly explains, ‘If the law will not punish you, we will.’ The woman is Xochitl, a climate-change activist recently orphaned after a freak heat wave claimed her mother’s life. Dissatisfied by the minuscule gains being made in her fight against climate crisis, she has turned to sabotage and property destruction, symbolic acts of violence that cannot be ignored. Before long, her radical resolve leads her to spearhead a crew of friends and strangers, each with a hard-luck story of their own, on a daring mission to blow up a West Texas pipeline.
Inspired by Andreas Malm’s controversial non-fiction treatise of the same name – which describes sabotage as an effective and necessary form of climate activism – director Goldhaber judiciously deploys the grammar of a heist film to put Malm’s provocative theory into thrilling and persuasive practice. (source: www.tiff.net)