From The Day After Tomorrow to Mad Max: How cinema helps us understand science

This approach can make complex topics - such as climate change, extreme weather, sea level rise or migration - more understandable to a wide audience.

Details

The Science & Cinema format was developed by Hildrun Walter, Fritz Treiber and their colleagues. The idea is simple: cinema already knows how to attract attention, evoke emotions and tell stories. If this interest is used in the right way, films can become a reason to talk about science.

During the events, the audience was shown short scenes from famous films, and then an expert explained where the science was based, where it was conventional and where it was wrong. The audience could then ask questions and discuss what they had seen.

One of such cycles was devoted to climate change. The organisers structured the programme as a sequential story: from ice and glaciers to water, drought, extreme weather and migration.

The discussion included scenes from The Day After Tomorrow, Through the Snow, Ice Age, Artificial Intelligence, Waterworld, Deathstroke, Geostorm, Mad Max, Green Soylent and March.

Scientific commentary was provided by Professor of Meteorology and Geophysics Ulrich Fölsche from the University of Graz. He helped to separate real climate science from film dramatisation and explained what processes scientists really study.

Why it matters

Science often seems complicated and distant from everyday life. Cinema, on the other hand, works through emotions, images and familiar stories. Therefore, a scene from a film can be a convenient entry point into a conversation about real scientific issues.

The authors note that the format helped to attract not only people from the university environment. At the cinema event, the audience was more mixed: some of the audience came because of the festival or the film programme, rather than because of an interest in climate issues. Nevertheless, participants were engaged in the discussion and felt that they had learnt something new.

This is especially important for science communication. Often lectures and discussions are attended by those who are already interested in science. The format with film can broaden the audience and engage people who would not otherwise come to a science event.

Background

Film has long influenced how society imagines science. Sometimes films inspire interest in space, biology, climate, or technology. But sometimes they perpetuate mistakes: exaggerating the speed of disasters, making scientists' jobs easier, or showing impossible scenarios as almost real.

Science & Cinema proposes to harness this same power of cinema for educational purposes. Instead of simply criticising films for inaccuracies, scientists can explain why a script works dramatically but doesn't always work scientifically.

That said, the study authors recognise the limitations of the study: the sample was small and the format needs to be tested further. So we can't say that film screenings dramatically increase scientific literacy. But as a way to engage viewers and start a conversation about complex topics, the approach looks promising.

Source

The study by Hildrun Walter, Fritz Treiber and co-authors The communication format, Science & Cinema: reflecting on representations of science in movies for joint meaning-making is published in the Journal of Science Communication in 2026. The authors described the Science & Cinema format and evaluated it at public events on scientific topics and their representation in films.