The Great European Disaster Movie
“Despite the fictional framework the film is full of facts and figures. It also has its quota of jolting visuals, violence and rioting. Wildly alarmist or vital warning?”The Financial Times
“The documentary is a crucial chance to open up the conversation for all sides. It looks at the issues with an urgency necessitated by the current crisis. It considers what we stand to lose if the union breaks up as well as what we've gained.”Cafébabel
At 35,000 feet, sometime in the not-so-distant future, eight year-old Jane Monnetti sits on a plane to Berlin, headed into a menacing storm.
But all is not well at ground level. The European Union has collapsed, and countries that collaborated happily at the start of the 21st century are regressing into a fractious collection of competing nation states.
Scared by the turbulence, Jane strikes up conversation with an archaeologist beside her, Charles Granda. He is about to give a lecture on the EU, something she has never heard of.
In Charles’ suitcase are five artefacts, evoking five stories for Jane about what the EU was, why things went so wrong, and what has been lost since its demise.
The Great European Disaster Movie depicts a Europe sleepwalking towards disaster. The film pairs an imagined dystopian future with insightful, cross-national analysis by experts and by ordinary citizens alike. It frames Europe through the eyes of those who are most important to its success: Europeans themselves.
Co-produced by the BBC and Arte, The Great European Disaster Movie (2015) has been watched by over 2.5 million viewers in 12 countries and has been translated into 10 languages, including Farsi and Japanese.
BBC4 broadcast the film as part of its Storyville strand in March 2015, provoking controversy and criticism from the “Leave” campaign in the UK. Annalisa Piras addressed the fallout in an op-ed for The Guardian.
The film won the prestigious German CIVIS Media Prize in 2016, selected from over 900 media programmes from across Europe. The prize was bestowed by the German Federal President Joachim Gauck and the President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz at the German Foreign Office in Berlin.
Watch the Film
Stream on Amazon or contact us to organise a screening with the Wake Up Europe! campaign.