How To Blow Up A Pipeline trailer: revolutionary action hits theaters

TIFF stunner How To Blow Up A Pipeline brings elements of a heist thriller to a drama about a group of young environmental activists trying to put a stop to the construction of an oil pipeline in West Texas.

The younger, predominantly Gen-Z cast is comprised of The White Lotus’ Lukas Gage, as well as Kristine Froseth, Forrest Goodluck, Sasha Lane, Jayme Lawson, Marcus Scribner, and Jake Weary. As the group works together to put their dangerous and illegal plan in motion, they have to avoid causing further environmental damage in the process.

The film from Ariela Barer, Jordan Sjol, Daniel Goldhaber, and Daniel Garber is based on Andreas Malm’s 2020 non-fiction book of the same title, in which the climate scholar pushes against the deeply-entrenched pacifist approach to environmentalism, and asserts the need for escalation tactics (violence and property destruction) in the face of corporate greed. Namely, it’s a manifesto for blowing up oil pipelines. It’s a radical look at activism that opposes climate fatalism and argues for more intense action in the face of ecological collapse.

Barer, who also stars in How To Blow Up A Pipeline, says the book entered their lives at the right time.

“We were all to varying degrees, dissatisfied with the world in our lives, and we felt incredibly disempowered and just you know, how we can affect the world. And this book kind of came onto our lap,” Barer tells IndieWire. “We all just kind of became obsessed with it. It was so just invigorating. It felt like it put a fire in us again.”

She adds, “Our worldviews were shaped by very different eras. And that was an important dialogue that we had as we wrote it.”

In a chat with Collider, Goldhaber explains: 

“The movie is based on a manifesto by climate activist Andreas Malm, who basically writes about the fact that every single social justice movement in history has, at the very least, been predicated on the destruction of property, and that climate change poses an existential threat to human life on Earth and is kind of questioning whether or not property destruction is necessary to move away from fossil fuels and preserve human civilization and society as we know it, and so we adapted these ideas. The book has no story. It’s just kind of political theory. We adapted these ideas into essentially a heist thriller film about young climate activists who blow up an oil pipeline in rural Texas. The movie kind of walks you through, in pretty exacting detail, how they build the bombs and how they do it and in kind of classic heist fashion, they have a very complex and exciting plan.”

How To Blow Up A Pipeline arrives in theaters on April 7.