News

While Hollywood movies like Don’t Look Up and The Day After Tomorrow have used climate change as the inspiration for some high-stakes storytelling, Hillary Clinton would like the entertainment industry to start thinking smaller. A lot smaller. Like, infant or preschooler small. Through the Clinton Foundation’s Too Small to Fail program, an early childhood initiative founded in 2014, the former secretary of state is now encouraging Hollywood writers and producers to embed ideas about young children and climate change in their films and TV shows.

“There’s now research on this topic, but most people are not aware at all,” Clinton says, of the idea that young children are especially vulnerable to extreme heat, stronger storms and wildfires. “Our hope is that we can help people make the connections between children’s mental and physical health and the impact of climate change.” Too Small to Fail already has some experience...

To make war crimes doc “The Cranes Call,” which premiered at Tribeca on Sunday, director Laura Warner embedded with investigator Anya Neistat of the Clooney Foundation for Justice. While in Ukraine, Warner watched Neistat as she doggedly documented evidence of human rights abuses to bring Russian commanders and soldiers to trial in courts across Europe.

Neisat worked closely with Solomiia Stasiv, her young Ukrainian interpreter, who quickly became her invaluable sidekick as they traveled to all corners of Ukraine and spoke to survivors of violence, sifting through wreckage and piecing together clues from a still ongoing conflict.

Warner and the doc’s executive producer Siobhan Sinnerton spoke to Variety about the challenges of making this slow-burning thriller-like piece.

How did the project originate? What role did Hilary Clinton’s HiddenLight Productions play in germinating it, and what role did the Clooney Foundation play?

Siobhan Sinnerton: Well Hidden Light has a...