Short Film ‘Daughter’ Highlights the Impact That Climate Change Has on Women around the World

‘DAUGHTER’ is an online film highlighting the outsized impact that climate change has on women around the world. Featuring five young protagonists, real people who were drawn to the subject based on their own concerns and fears about the future and about climate-related gender inequality. The protagonists include the filmmakers own daughter and friends.

The film was written, directed and shot by Jason van Bruggen, in partnership with boutique agency Dot Dot Dash. It features beautiful immersive shots of young women in nature as well as shocking natural disasters, the horrific consequences of our continued actions.

International Women’s Day has ‘chapters’ in different parts of the world, but this film is a tribute to all daughters and is an expression of hope for the future world that they will inhabit. As such, it has no formal affiliation with any national chapter.

The film was made to highlight the gender inequality fostered and created by climate change, and to encourage people to think about the links between women’s empowerment and effective global climate action.

The film was shot in the filmmakers’ backyard, rural Ontario, across three seasons. The actors bravely swam in freezing cold water, broke trails in the snow, started bonfire and were otherwise immersed in nature.

Jason van Bruggen comments: “As a generally aware person, climate change keeps me awake at night. Digging deeper and pondering what kind of a planet we are leaving for our children compels me to act in the way that I can. Every year, I author and bring to life a campaign on the topic of how climate change impacts certain constituencies. These films and stories have been picked by by networks and publications around the world including BBC, CNN, CBC, Explorers Journal, as well as various brands. Hopefully they have created awareness helped shift audiences behaviours. As father to two growing daughters, there is no bigger responsibility than creating the possibilities for their success. In our rush to accumulate wealth, provide stability, education and opportunity, we often neglect to address the bigger picture collective responsibility we have to our children: leaving them a habitable planet on which they can survive and thrive.”

Jason continues: "My inspiration was my children. Watching them grow and learn, and ask myriad questions about the world they are inheriting keeps this topic top of mind. That coupled with a disturbing sense that despite many of our advancements in the western world, both women’s rights and democracy seem to be under attack recently forced me to think about how gender bias exists in our climate emergency, as it does in so many aspects of life."