Greta Thunberg, portrait of the teenage activist

When she thinks about what she has lived through in the last two years, Greta Thunberg has the feeling of remembering "a dream or a surreal film."

In it there would be a bit of a

, a certain dose of judicial film, a few drops of adventure films and some adolescent drama, like a Frank Capra story directed by the first Lukas Moodysson.

All this contains

, the documentary about the first year of activism of this high school student who one day in 2018 sat on a street in Stockholm to start a school strike for the climate, which today continues to call every Friday, after having ended his sabbatical so that he could return to the institute.

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The director of the documentary, which was premiered at the Venice Film Festival, is the Swede Nathan Grossman, who had the merit of understanding, before anyone else, that behind his unlikely heroine there was a story to tell.

He followed Thunberg for months on all his travels, which has allowed him to accumulate hundreds of hours of footage with which he manages to sketch a more versatile portrait than that usually offered by the breaking news.

Thunberg, who appeared by videoconference to present the film at the Mostra, acknowledged that Grossman's minimal device - who works alone, without an assistant and not even a sound engineer - seemed, at first glance, "not very professional."

"I came to doubt the seriousness of the project," he admitted.

“At some point I got worried.

I had so much material that I could tell the story in a way that didn't reflect who I am.

But he has managed to portray me as I am, and not that angry and naive girl who yells at world leaders.

Because I am not that person ”.

Thunberg said she is comfortable with what she sees on screen: "A shy person and a bit

."

"I am not that angry and naive girl who yells at world leaders"

I am Greta

sins of an excessive (and understandable) benevolence with respect to its object of study, although it also manages to condense some priceless moments of Thunberg's frenetic journey to world stardom.

For example, her meeting with Emmanuel Macron, who seems intimidated by her intelligence and whom she dispatches without hesitation at the Elysee.

"You're in a hurry, so maybe you should be pulling," she snaps.

Or her meeting with Jean-Paul Juncker, in which she responds to an incendiary proclamation of the young woman with a delusional speech about the "harmonization" of toilet chains in Europe.

Or, in a more intimate way, a fight with her father - omnipresent in the documentary, unlike her mother and sister - who does not hesitate to stop a demonstration until she agrees to eat a banana.

The supposed control that her parents exercise over her, so often argued by her detractors, is limited to making her eat that fruit.

The documentary also reflects her transformation into a black beast of leaders like Donald Trump, who has her name booed at a rally;

Jair Bolsonaro, who calls her a "girl", or an unidentified editorialist for Fox News, who does not hesitate to call her "mentally ill."

There are two thorny issues that the documentary reflects, but never addresses.

The first is the cult of personality that Thunberg has inspired, which has many times overshadowed his own cause.

“If I can be a bridge for people to better understand the climate crisis, I guess it's good.

But it would not have to be so focused on me as a person, as has happened until now, "admitted the young militant, who in the film is uncomfortable with the attention received, although later he does not manage to move away from the spotlight. .

The other issue is whether her autism affects her stubborn priesthood for the future of the planet.

The documentary reflects that her attitude has a very high wear, through a discreet but significant sequence in which Thunberg is exasperated by a text full of French faults.

It is an uncomfortable idea, perhaps the only one, that the documentary has the audacity to hint at.

The taxi driver who stole a 'goya'

Out of competition, 'The Duke' recalled the story of Kempton Bunton, the eccentric English taxi driver who in 1961 managed to steal Goya's portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the rooms of the National Gallery in London.

The film, directed by Roger Michell ('Notting Hill'), recovers that story in a suitably sugary version, ready to aspire to the title of British comedy of the season and promote its leading partner, Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren, in the face of the great acting prizes (when there are any).

Set in a Newcastle of smoky chimneys that Lowry could have painted, in which the danger called the common market was already beginning to be talked about, 'The Duke' covers with carpet and wallpaper a story of social misery that starts from a somewhat populist premise: Why spend millions of pounds on a goya when we can have free television?