Today, like a ship entering the storm, industrial civilisation faces the first symptoms of energy depletion and
climate change induced collapse. ONCE YOU KNOW asks the disturbing questions: Are there better ways of collapsing than others? What is meaningful work on the way down? Director Emmanuel Cappellin is obsessed with how to best respond personally and collectively.
His quest leads him around the world to meet five of the world’s leading climate scientists and energy
experts. They share with him the truth, chaos, and hope in their work. They allow him to challenge
everything he took for granted – from growth-based democracies to personal freedoms.
This odyssey brings him back to himself and to Saillans, his small mountain village. In this life-size, open sky
laboratory, everything becomes once again possible: having a child, redefining questions of social justice,
implementing participatory democracy, starting an energy transition…The first steps, perhaps, towards some
kind of collective resilience.