Overview
Existential Risk is a film about the possibility of human extinction or civilizational collapse, as these questions are grappled with in Cambridge, England. A personal documentary in which the filmmaker’s own existential crisis (micro) is contrasted with planetary risk (macro).
I thought the allegorical blend of straight-up documentary and autobiography was unusual, but worked rather well as a means of humanising a subject which might otherwise seem too big to grasp. I also liked the way he presented Cambridge both as a place where radical change is unthinkable, and as the place thinking about exactly those changes. Cambridge resident, John Aldridge
The film features: Martin Rees, David Cleevely, Shahar Avin, Huw Price, Heather Douglas, Hugh Hunt, Adrian Currie, Jane Heal, Stephen Cave, Toby Walsh, Alan Blackwell, Sean Holden, Lucy Cheke, Stephen Layton.
Gary Walkow is an American filmmaker based in Cambridge. He has made ten feature films, including the Grand Prize Winner at the Sundance Film Festival.