Greta Thunberg, the teenage climate activist, on Friday said the weight of
having to sound the alarm on climate change was “too much” for her or
any child. She said this after a movie based on her rise was
premiered at the Venice film festival.

The Swedish teenager allowed film-maker
Nathan Grossman to follow her for a year after he met her in 2018 on the very
first day of her schools’ strike, sitting alone outside parliament in Stockholm
with her homemade placard.

According to a report in AFP, the resulting film, “Greta”, not only reveals the inside story of the pain and risk Thunberg put herself
through for the climate cause but her love of breaking into dance and
her gift for comedy.

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Thunberg told AFP that she hoped the intimate, often
touching portrait that tracks her extraordinary rise would put an end to the
“conspiracy theories that I don’t think for myself and someone else writes
my speeches.

“In the movie, you can see that is not actually true, that I
do decide for myself,” said the activist.

The movie also features her clashes with her actor father, Svante, often over her perfectionism as she writes and rewrites her
speeches.

Speaking via Zoom during a break in classes at her secondary school
in Stockholm, Thunberg said the film was true to the real her, someone who
“loves her dogs and routines” but whose life has been turned upside
down by the climate cause.

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The film shows how she dances in her pajamas to
relieve stress as she criss-crosses Europe on trains and in her father’s
electric car, living off baked beans and pasta as she urges leaders to act to
save the planet.

At another point she despairs that the responsibility of her
role to remind the world of the existential crisis it faces is “too
much”, a fear she repeated Friday during her virtual press conference at
Venice.

“It is such a responsibility. I don’t want to have to do all
this,” she said. Yet when far-right critics vilified her as “mentally
ill” in the film, Thunberg, who has Asperger syndrome, laughed it off
saying, “Sometimes I think it might be good if everyone had a bit of
Asperger’s.

“I don’t see the world in black and white, just the climate
crisis.”

Despite the adoration Thunberg now receives at demonstrations
and on social media, in the film she admits that “kids were mean to
me” when I was younger.

“I was never invited to parties and was left
out.”

The activist, now 17, said she was relieved the documentary does
away with the idea that she is an “angry naive child who sits in the
United Nation General Assembly screaming at world leaders, because that is not
the person I am.”

Indeed, she drew a laugh from reporters and Grossman by
admitting that at one stage she “doubted his seriousness” as a
film-maker because he worked on his own.

“Why don’t they send a sound guy?
Why aren’t they more professional?” she wondered.

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The film shows how the
straight-talking schoolgirl went from being a quiet introvert to a global
celebrity in a few months in 2018, and her frustration at the gulf between
politicians’ promises and their actions.

“I think the most surprising
thing about Greta is that she is very, very funny,” Grossman told
reporters. “Sometimes I joke that she could have been a comedian. She is
very charming and funny as you have seen in this press conference.”