The Island President review

After bringing democracy to an island nation that had suffered under dictatorship, President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives faces a new challenge: if warming sea waters keep rising, his low-lying homeland will disappear under the Indian Ocean.

Jon Shenk’s documentary follows the plucky Pres as he takes this inconvenient truth to the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit in an attempt to convince superpowers to curb their carbon emissions.

Nasheed may be a small fish in a big geopolitical pond, but his enterprise and optimism are a welcome complement to eco doc doom and gloom.