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As part of the X NEW BRITISH FILM FESTIVAL The British Embassy in Moscow, British Council and WWF present the documentary-drama-animation film The Age of Stupid.

The effects of climate change are becoming more and more acutely felt throughout the world. Addressing this problem is a key issue in international dialogue at all levels in the run-up to the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009.

The Age of Stupid showcase and discussion will take place in the central hall of the British embassy in Moscow (Smolenskaya nab. 10).
Special guests of the event are:

Helen Walters, Head of the British Embassy’s Climate Security and Science section
Evgeniy Arkadievich Shvarts, Director for Nature Conservation Policy, WWF Russia

Accreditation deadline is 16-00 28 October.

To accredit, please contact Press Section of the British embassy in Moscow, tel. 495 956 7281, maria.kroupnik@fco.gov.uk.

EDITOR NOTES:

Synopsis
The Age of Stupid is the new film from Director Franny Armstrong (McLibel, Drowned Out) and Oscar-winning Producer John Battsek (One Day in September, Live Forever, In the Shadow of the Moon).

Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite (In The Name of the Father, Brassed Off, and The Usual Suspects) stars as an old man living in the devastated world of 2055. He watches 'archive' footage from 2008 and asks: “Why didn't we stop climate change when we had the chance?”

Runaway climate change has ravaged the planet by 2055. Pete plays the founder of The Global Archive, a storage facility located in the (melted) Arctic, preserving all of humanity's achievements in the hope that the planet might one day be habitable again, or that intelligent life may arrive and make use of all that humankind achieved. He pulls together clips of “archive” news and documentary from 1950-2008 to build a message showing what went wrong and why.

Following the film there be addresses from former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Pete Postlethwaite and a live performance from Radiohead's Thom Yorke!

THE GUARDIAN: "It is a captivating and constantly surprising film: the first successful dramatisation of climate change to reach the big screen."

FINANCIAL TIMES: "It lectures us sternly and pitilessly – yet also intelligently and provokingly… The Age of Stupid presses all the right buttons."

THE TIMES: "most imaginative and dramatic assault on the institutional complacency shrouding the issue"

NEWS OF THE WORLD: "A Deeply Inconvenient Kick Up The Backside… You won’t see a more important film this year"