Climate justice: “By leading the fight collectively, we can move things forward”

Climate justice: “By leading the fight collectively, we can move things forward”

Director of a docuseries in 4 episodes, to watch on Arte.tv, Zouhair Chebbale tells how he followed 4 legal epics across Europe. Four citizen movements transformed into state affairs to fight global warming. Or the court as a new front in the ecological battle.

PREMIERE: How was this idea of ​​making a documentary series at the heart of the ecological legal battle born?
Zouhair Chebbale : I am someone who is interested in the society in which I live. I have children and so everything related to ecology interests me. Being of Moroccan origin, water and drought problems are things that speak to me. And then one day, I saw this famous petition “Our Everyone’s Business” in the news. I signed it and I met Marie Toussaint, at the initiative of “The Affair of the Century” and this trial against the State, to submit to her the idea of ​​making a documentary, in order to to echo his commitment. From there, I pulled the threads from the other cases. Because all these court cases are interconnected. The legal department ofUrgenda (in the Netherlands), which was the first European case based on climate litigation, helped “Notre Affaire à tous”, guiding them in their legal procedures. They also helped the affairs of the Portuguese and the Swiss.

Did you follow four emblematic cases so that it was divided into four episodes?
No, initially I thought I would make a classic 52-minute film about European justice to raise awareness. I wanted to provide solutions and move away from simple observations, to give a little hope. When the project was submitted to Arte, they proposed that it be transformed into a series for the Arte.tv platform. And it's true that it was perfectly suited to this, since we are following four cases, in France, Portugal, the Netherlands and Switzerland. It made sense to split this into four episodes. Especially since it's a format that more easily reaches young people, namely the audience targeted by the series! So I had to learn how to write a series. Léa Ducré helped me a lot with this.

“Any citizen of these countries will be able to go to court to request financial compensation from their own State, if they consider themselves wronged in their everyday life”

Concretely, how did the filming go? How did you take your camera to the heart of these affairs?
For almost a year and a half, between 2021 and 2023, I was able to meet these actors. We first went to Portugal, then to the Netherlands then to France and finally to Switzerland. These are four really different cases. Urgenda was the pioneer, the first to condemn her national government. And the Dutch state played the game. It accepted the court decision and took measures. It was really a collaboration and a positive signal that I wanted to tell. The Portuguese affair took me to a complementary dimension, because it took place at a European level. They directly attacked 33 States, without going through the justice system of their country! As for the Swiss, they are seniors who have been rejected three times at a national level. So they went to the European Court of Human Rights. As a result, this offered an interesting demographic and business panel. This shows the overall spectrum of what is happening in Europe in terms of climate justice.

What is the message of the series ultimately?
We want to show that by leading the fight collectively, it is possible to move things forward. Today, the fight must be fought at the legal level. But not on a national level. We must take the fight to the European Court of Human Rights. Because a condemnation from the ECHR would not be symbolic. If it intervenes, all the signatory countries of the Human Rights Convention will be forced. Any citizen of these countries will be able to go to court to request financial compensation from their own State, if they consider themselves wronged in their everyday life in relation to climate change. If this conviction occurs, the State will no longer be able to discard its debt.

Climate Justice is a winner of the Impact 2023 Fund in partnership with FIDADOC. What does this bring to the series?
This label allows the series to join a distribution circuit allowing it to be seen by as many people as possible. It will be a springboard. What pleases me about the Impact Fund is that it will be shown to as many people as possible. And that's what I want. Usually, films end up on a DVD shelf or today in a file on a computer, after being broadcast on TV. There, there is no history of rights. The series, as it is, can be streamed as much as needed. For 1 year, Climate Justice will be visible on Arte.tv. Which is very rare on television. The Impact label therefore provides additional resonance.

Climate Justice – 4x15mn documentary series – Since Tuesday April 9, 2024 on arte.tv, YouTube and ARTE social channels

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