Abstract

This Expo Facto research critically examines how the aesthetic and narrative variables specific to postmodern cinema are used to represent the climate change crisis, a hyper-complex, global-scale phenomenon. Based on a theoretical framework that integrates postmodern film theory with ecocriticism and environmental mediation studies, a corpus of films produced since the late 20th century is analyzed. The analysis identifies the operation of key variables such as pastiche, self-referentiality, non-linear and fragmented narrative, the aesthetics of the dystopian sublime, and the indeterminacy of the subject versus collective agency. It is argued that these strategies, while effectively capturing the decentralization, uncertainty, and information overload of the Anthropocene era, can also lead to political paralysis or an aesthetization of disaster, distancing the viewer from concrete action. The article concludes that postmodern climate cinema oscillates between being a symptom of modernity’s inability to narrate totality and a powerful tool for visualizing new relational ecological ontologies, challenging traditional heroic and anthropocentric narratives.

Keywords: postmodern cinema | climate change | ecocriticism | narrative | Anthropocene | environmental mediation | modernity/coloniality | hyperobjects.