Tipping Point: The End of Oil

Sep 16, 2011

1h 32m

★ 8.0

The biggest construction project on the planet is transforming a Canadian wilderness and costing lives. Welcome to the tar sands.

Overview

In an oil-scarce world, we know there are sacrifices to be made in the pursuit of energy. What no one expected was that a tiny Native community, living down the river from Canada's tar sands, would reach out to the world for help — and be heard.

Genres

Documentary

History

Tipping Point: The End of Oil Trailers

Cast

Narrator (voice)

Sigourney Weaver

Self

James Cameron

The imagination of history in Ecuador never thought that oil, “its redeeming hope”, discovered in the Lago Agrio No. 1 well, was going to mean the beginning of the worst environmental catastrophe on the planet. Thirty years of operation and exploitation of the Texaco company, forever transformed the rivers and estuaries, the forests and the life of the indigenous communities in the northern Amazon of Ecuador.

6.0

California Company Town

Sep 22, 2008

Lee Anne Schmitt explores California's landscape and past to document the history of one-time boom towns built and abandoned by the industries that necessitated their creation. Sold as a limitless land expansive with free opportunity, California was actually, from its onset, fissured by the interwoven needs of private and public interests. Schmitt's film covers various locations through time, as the major industries of the early 20th century (mining, lumber, oil) give way to the military, eventually leading to multinational corporations, and the use of small towns as satellites for growing urban metropolises.

7.2

Crude Oil

Jan 17, 2008

Filmed in the Inner Mongolian portion of the Gobi Desert, this film follows a group of oil field workers as they go about their daily routine.

10.0

The White Gold of Greenland

Feb 9, 2025

A documentary that challenges the notion of Greenland being the eternal cost for Denmark.

7.0

Nuuca

Jul 2, 2018

In this evocative meditation, a disturbing link is made between the resource extraction industries’ exploitation of the land and violence inflicted on Indigenous women and girls. Or, as one young woman testifies, “Just as the land is being used, these women are being used.”

0.0

Abenteuer Karibik

Jul 30, 2017

No overview available.

No Image

0.0

Fuel-Less, You Can’t Be Cool Without Fuel

Sep 15, 1996

A spoof on the movie “Clueless” – follows high-school queen Crystal through the worst day of her young, pampered life. It seems that everything in her life derived from oil has disappeared: her makeup, Daddy’s credit card, gasoline for her beloved BMW and aspirin for her growing stress headache — all gone. But with a little guidance from Miss Watkins, her “extremely cool science teacher,” Crystal gets a better understanding of where oil comes from, how it is processed and how the products made from oil impact our everyday lives.

0.0

Y aura-t-il de l’eau cet été ?

Dec 10, 2025

Through encounters with a hydrologist, a farmer, and citizens mobilized around the Marais Poitevin, the director helps us understand the effects—on biodiversity and the state of rivers—of substitution reservoirs, also known as megabassins. For several years, Anne-Morwenn, David, Patrick, Yann, and others have been fighting for fair water sharing and devising ways to convince as many people as possible that it is time to change the agricultural model.

0.0

Wiebo's War

Apr 28, 2011

Wiebo Ludwig is the leader of a Christian group who brought his family to live in Alberta, Canada, 25 years ago in order live a life according to scripture. They built a small, self-sufficient community in a place that they did not realize was one of the largest undeveloped natural gas fields in North America. Unlike others who lived in the area, Wiebo and his family refused to sell their land and move, and now Wiebo is the prime suspect in a series of pipeline bombings and other acts of sabotage against the local oil industry.

0.0

Oil Springs

Jun 13, 2025

The story will mostly take place in the town Oil Springs, Ontario, where the oil industry in North America was born. By making a case study of this town, we can better understand how the industry operates today. The documentary will explore themes of colonialism, climate change and Canadian identity.

0.0

Testimonio de un obrero petrolero

Jan 1, 1978

Through the testimony of Manuel Taborda, a pioneer of labor organizing in Venezuela’s oil fields, this documentary revisits the experiences of oil workers between 1920 and 1936. Their memories reveal a world marked by corporal punishment, exploitation, racial segregation, and disease, alongside the emergence of collective resistance against the American and British oil companies that controlled the industry and the government that enabled them.

7.4

Killers of the Flower Moon

Oct 18, 2023

When oil is discovered in 1920s Oklahoma under Osage Nation land, the Osage people are murdered one by one—until the FBI steps in to unravel the mystery.

0.0

Secrets & Deals

Sep 6, 2022

In 1971, Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE ceased to be part of Britain’s empire in the Middle East and became fully independent states. BBC News Persia and BBC Arabic collaborate in this gripping film, to uncover the secrets and shady deals that underpinned the decolonization process. From eye-witness accounts of a British-organised coup to Iran being left in control of disputed islands, it's a fascinating insight to a murky history.

7.2

Collapse

Sep 12, 2009

From the acclaimed director of American Movie, the documentary follows former Los Angeles police officer turned independent reporter Michael Ruppert. He recounts his career as a radical thinker and spells out his apocalyptic vision of the future, spanning the crises in economics, energy, environment and more.

7.0

Searching for Skylab, America's Forgotten Triumph

Feb 8, 2019

The first American space station Skylab is found in pieces scattered in Western Australia. Putting these pieces back together and re-tracing the Skylab program back to its very conception reveals the cornerstone of human space exploration.

6.4

Earth 2100

Jun 2, 2009

Experts say over the next hundred years the "perfect storm" of population growth, resource depletion and climate change could converge with catastrophic results. The scenarios in Earth 2100 are not a prediction of what will happen but rather a warning about what might happen.

6.6

Flow: For Love of Water

Sep 12, 2008

From both local and global perspectives, this documentary examines the harsh realities behind the mounting water crisis. Learn how politics, pollution and human rights are intertwined in this important issue that affects every being on Earth. With water drying up around the world and the future of human lives at stake, the film urges a call to arms before more of our most precious natural resource evaporates.

7.3

The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream

Jan 12, 2004

Since World War II North Americans have invested much of their newfound wealth in suburbia. It has promised a sense of space, affordability, family life and upward mobility. As the population of suburban sprawl has exploded in the past 50 years Suburbia, and all it promises, has become the American Dream. But as we enter the 21st century, serious questions are beginning to emerge...

Tipping Point: The End of Oil

Overview

Genres

Tipping Point: The End of Oil Trailers