Sundance: Al Gore's 'Inconvenient Sequel' has added timeliness with Trump

PARK CITY, Utah — The 33rd annual Sundance Film Festival got off to an appropriately political start.

Hours after founder Robert Redford defended artists in the Donald Trump era at an opening-day press conference, former Vice President Al Gore acknowledged the president-elect in his topical An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, which premiered at the fest Thursday.

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Directed by Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk, Sequel (which Paramount will release in theaters July 28) surveys the alarming effects of climate change in the decade since Gore's Academy Award-winning 2006 documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. The 99-minute film is centered on Gore as he travels around the country giving presentations in his "climate leadership training" sessions: spouting off troubling statistics about air pollution levels and melting polar ice caps, but also citing improving trends in solar and renewable energy worldwide.

Audience members were spotted wiping away tears during emotional interviews with survivors of the Philippines' Typhoon Haiyan in 2013, and later, when Gore traveled to Paris for a global conference on climate change, just weeks after terrorist attacks rocked the city in November 2015.

But scenes involving Trump elicited the most passionate responses from the crowd — some of whom shook their heads and muttered profanities during TV clips of the soon-to-be-inaugurated president-elect calling global-warming fears "insane" and a "low problem" on the nation's agenda. The film ends with Gore reading news of Trump's victory the day after the election: at first seemingly frustrated, but later hopeful as he walks into a meeting at Trump Tower in New York.

Despite worries that Trump will cut climate and energy funding when he takes office, Gore stuck to his encouraging message as he addressed festival-goers at the Eccles Theatre.

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"Over the years, there have been a lot of people who have started out as deniers and have changed over time. Whether he will or not remains to be seen," Gore said. Global warming is "not a political issue; it's a moral issue, it's an ethical issue. ... We have the capacity to rise above our limitations. Whether or not Donald Trump will take the kind of approach that continues this progress, we'll have to see. But let me reiterate: No one person can stop this. It's too big now."

Reviews have so far been positive for Sequel, whose premiere the night before Trump's inauguration many critics found apt and even beneficial. "If Hillary Clinton were about to be inaugurated as president, then An Inconvenient Sequel would still be highly worth seeing," wrote Variety's Owen Gleiberman. "But the movie ... has now been given the kind of shot in the arm that only a seething enemy can provide." Indiewire's Eric Kohn said that "Gore hits an inspiring note at a moment when it’s in short supply," even if another sequel may be needed sooner rather than later.