No Impact Man

Colin Beavan is a writer living in Manhattan. For one year he tries to live leaving no impact on the environment at all: no lifts, no flights, no packaged food, no shopping. In the end he will cut off the electricity too. His wife Michelle and their two-year-old daughter are inside the experiment as well, and Michelle is not at all keen on the idea. Laura Gabbert and Justin Schein directed the film together. The documentary shows the environmental question from inside a household rather than by lecturing: the real tension is not the climate but the marriage. The telling does not declare Beavan a model citizen; it shows the showy side of the project and its place in the press. The experiment comes out of Beavan's own project and book.