The Researcher

After refusing to fly, climate researcher loses his job: below the New York Times headline is a selfie of a 50-year-old man aboard a pirogue plying the tropical sea, his intellectual goggles contrasting with his Indiana Jones hat. By the time the news detonates globally from the pages of The Guardian and The New York Times on Oct. 13, 2023, Prof. Gianluca Grimalda, an environmental researcher at Kiel University, Germany, has been involved in filming for "The Researcher" for a year. Six months earlier, Grimalda had traveled for 40 days to reach Papua New Guinea, the site of his research, filming the 23,000 kilometers he traveled and the dozens of trains, buses, trucks, cabs, ferries and cargo ships that, emitting ten times less than a single, comfortable air trip, made him save 3.5 tons of CO2. And when, after six months of research in the remotest villages of New Guinea, the University intimates that he must return to his professorship within five days (i.e., by implication, get on a plane) he says no, becoming the first worker fired for refusing to fly. An environmental activist and member of Scientist Rebellion, Grimalda gave up everything - an enviable career and salary, the relationship with his girlfriend, family affections, and a job he loved beyond all else - to raise the alarm about the now desperate condition of the planet, to provide an example and, perhaps, a possible way out. In this film of travel, of adventures, of individual moral principles and universal crisis, there is undoubtedly something crazy. It remains to be seen whether madness is in The Researcher’s action or in its viewers’ everyday behavior.