Director Nina Holmgren and Lasse Cato, Head of Communications at Bacon, talk about the Nowness-commissioned film that puts a surreal spin on the frustration of inaction over the climate crisis.

I Want You to Panic is a short film about climate change, commissioned by the culture platform Nowness as part of its Survival season. In this film we see a family who doesn’t notice that their house is slowly burning down. Shot with a high fashion look in the style of an editorial shoot this film delivers the message while matching the Nowness aesthetic. Set against an affecting speech by Greta Thunberg, the featured family appears to be in a torpor, staring vacantly into space as we hear and see the urgent messages of the activists. As smoke fills the house we are given statistics and facts on the climate emergency.

At the time this film was commissioned, Holmgren felt that Thunberg was particularly overexposed in the media and so she came up with a unique way to include her voice and her message while developing a compelling narrative for the film. “I decided I wanted to make a film that was an observation on passivity,” says the director.

“I think at first [Nowness] were a bit surprised because it wasn’t how they really imagined my pitch to be but I was so interested in doing an idea where you look at humans instead of the more classic storytelling, where you see ice melting and disasters happening,” says Holmgren.