‘This Is Not A Drill’ Review: An Environmental Call-To-Arms That Refuses To Contend With The Current Administration [Telluride]

Almost immediately after being sworn into office last January, President Trump promised to “unleash” oil and gas production in the United States. Beginning a series of rollbacks on green energy that the Biden administration championed, Trump’s plan to ramp up oil and gas production was met by environmental activists as just the latest in a series of setbacks brought about by the new administration. Not that you’d know this from director Oren Jacoby’s latest documentary, “This is Not a Drill,” an insightful look at the effects of environmental racism that sometimes nevertheless feels out of time. Outside of a few on-screen notes concluding the film, Jacoby doesn’t contend with the Trump administration’s championing of greenhouse gases. 

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Instead, in tracking three concurrent narratives from 2020-21, Jacoby frames these stories as the first in incremental steps towards a widespread environmental movement that contends with the effects of climate change nationwide. We follow Justin J. Pearson fighting against the Byhalia pipeline, which would run straight through Boxtown in Memphis, a predominantly Black city section. We also have Roishetta Ozane in Lake Charles, Louisiana, an organizer and founder of the Vessel Project, who is helping to rebuild her town in the aftermath of Hurricanes Laura and Delta. Finally, we track Sharon Wilson, an anti-fracking activist and former employee of oil and gas companies in Dallas, TX. 

Jacoby juxtaposes these narratives mainly to highlight the obfuscation that oil and gas companies utilize to sand down the environmental problems associated with their product and profession. A particularly horrifying point occurs when a spokesperson for the Byhalia pipeline notes that the pipeline will bypass the more predominantly white neighborhood of Germantown because Boxtown offers the “path of least resistance.” Pearson and others latch onto this quote to create a grassroots movement against the pipeline that gets the attention of Al Gore and descendants of the Rockefeller family, who are fighting against their family’s legacy as an oil producer. 

If I’ve focused mainly on Pearson’s narrative here, it’s because it’s the most tactile of the three. Ozane and Wilson’s work is essential, but much more abstract than the fight against an impending pipeline. Here we have an actual David and Goliath story. One wishes Jacoby had just trained his camera on Pearson and his work against the pipeline instead of diffusing his narrative across three people and locations, especially considering the film runs a quick 78 minutes. It also helps that Pearson is a dynamic figure, a characterization reinforced by the fact that he was famously one of the three state representatives expelled from the Tennessee House for protests against gun violence in 2023 (he was subsequently reappointed).

This is not to say that the other stories that Jacoby presents aren’t vital, because they truly are. But, by cross-cutting between three subjects and turning the clock back to five years earlier, the documentary cannot help but sometimes feel like a relic of a bygone time, one where a new, more climate-friendly administration was in power and the gains made by activists felt like they were within reach of being codified. The fact that the film doesn’t catch up with these people after the Biden administration feels like a missed opportunity, especially considering how the film frames its ending as hopeful, when we all know what is coming next. 

Nevertheless, the work that Pearson, Ozane, and Wilson are doing is essential, even more so during the current administration. Despite their projects’ setbacks, one never gets the sense that they will fold in the face of political or social pressure. The fact that they get such a showcase as the one Jacoby presents is a testament to the activism that they are doing, and the reality that this type of work needs to continue, especially now. [B-]

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Christian Gallichio

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