Greta Thunberg Sobs in Heartbreaking ‘I Am Greta’ Scene: “It’s Such A Responsibility”

Hulu’s I Am Greta is a moving and intimate look at now 17-year-old activist Greta Thunberg, and nowhere is that more true than in the film’s emotional climax, which finds Thunberg sailing across the Atlantic Ocean. (It was the only way she could get to the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit in New York City without flying.)

Directed by Swedish filmmaker Nathan Grossman, this documentary—which began streaming on Hulu today—may surprise audiences. Grossman began filming the Swedish activist when she was 15 and completely unknown, after the filmmaker heard from a friend that a student was going on a “school strike” to demand action on climate change from government officials. A few months later, over 20,000 students across the globe were joining her. While conservative critics have attacked Thunberg as “angry,” and her supporters have idolized her as a role model, Grossman’s film attempts to introduce us to the authentic version of Thunberg—a smart, thoughtful, and eloquent teenage girl who feels incredibly weighed down by the earth’s climate crisis.

You will be in awe with Thunberg as you follow her via train all over the continent, meeting with various politicians to beg them to take meaningful action on climate change. You will feel angry when she is met with patronizing smiles and pats on the back by those people, rather than solutions. But most of all, you will feel a deep sense of shame when, while traveling across the Atlantic Ocean by sailboat—she refuses to fly due to the carbon emissions of air travel—Thunberg breaks down sobbing over the great “responsibility” she feels to save the planet.

Speaking into the recorder app on her phone—her replacement for a diary while sailing on waters where it’s too bumpy to write longhand—Thunberg cries heavily, feeling homesick after speaking to her mother on the phone.

“I miss having a regular life, with routines,” she says in Swedish, her voice breaking, while waves crash around her just outside the boat’s window. “It is such a responsibility. I don’t want to have to do this. It’s too much for me. Around the clock. I know this is important and what is at stake. But it’s such a lot of responsibility.”

It’s impossible to come away from that scene unmoved by the crushing burden that Thunberg clearly feels to save our planet. It’s a mess she in no way started, but it’s one she is determined to clean up. So many of us have passively accepted the grim fate of the planets, as we half-heartedly recycle and maybe, sometimes compost. Thunberg is sailing across the Atlantic Ocean, and if this scene makes anything clear, it’s that she’s not doing it for fame, or fun, or fortune. She’s doing it because she feels like she has to.

Watch I Am Greta on Hulu