Last Wednesday night, hundreds queued to watch Damon Gameau’s new film, Future Council at the Byron Theatre. Gameau is an Australian actor, filmmaker and producer made famous by his films 2040 and That Sugar Film.
Future Council, which he started making in 2024, was released in August 2025 to Australian cinemas. It was the journey of eight kids from all over the world and one adult – Damon.
They drove across Europe in the Bumble Bus, an old, bright yellow American-style school bus that runs on biofuel.
Being an 11-year-old myself I found the film quite inspiring. Climate change and pollution being issues I’ll come across in my lifetime, the film really propelled me to do something.
The eight amazing kids, with a great leader, travelled through France, Germany, Switzerland and The Netherlands, meeting and questioning big companies including Nestlé, ING, and Decathlon. After that, they also met with other smaller environmental companies including Faith in Nature, who appointed ‘nature’ as one of their board members.
On their journey the kids enjoyed nature, told stories, delivered ‘bad ass’ speeches to a senior executive in Nestlé – ‘you are not a powerful leader, you are a disgrace’ leaving him speechless – and had lots of fun in general.
When the film ended there was a Q&A with Damon and Ruby Rodgers, one of the eight children in the film. In the rows of the audience of the Byron Community Centre hands shot up like rockets – lots of kids eager to ask questions after an amazing film.
Then Ruby, also a beautiful singer, serenaded us with her dad on guitar singing her song, ‘Hits The Heart’, which expresses her concerns about the climate crisis and a desire to do something. She also sang ‘Fix You’ by Coldplay.
When everything was finished and people had said their goodbyes, they left with a feeling of hope and aspiration, that the next generation might reverse the trajectory we are going in and bring a bright future for everyone, everywhere.
Louis Moynihan-Burne is a school captain at Byron Bay Public School and like lots of his friends, a passionate nature lover.
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