How to Blow Up a Pipeline

Daniel Goldhaber’s subversive and brilliantly constructed thriller, almost painfully tense and gripping, upends the cinematic stereotype of environmental activists as cultish adherents to an irresponsible doctrine of violent disruption that is usually indifferent to the effects it wreaks upon an innocent unsuspecting populace. Instead, it portrays the anger of its characters as entirely legitimate, and the actions it fuels as understandable.

Believing that the climate movement is doomed to failure if it continues to follow the pacifist model, a group of activists, notably all in their late teens or early twenties, come together with a plan to destroy a Texan pipeline. Each member of the group has their own motivation for taking action, from Native American Michael (Forrest Goodluck), angry at the company’s encroachment upon tribal land, to Theo (Sasha Lane), dying from cancer as a result of exposure to toxic chemicals.