Cli-Fi Cinema

Abstract This chapter outlines the relationship between science fiction (sf) and climate fiction, both literary and cinematic, and urges a broader understanding of what it means to tell stories about anthropogenic climate destabilization. It considers a wide range of cli-fi movies in relation to several dominant narrative trends—strategic realism, techno-utopianism, and apocalyptic environmentalism—and concludes by demonstrating how a film such as Arrival (2017) might be read as an unconscious treatment of climate change concerns.