Die grüne Lüge

DIE GRÜNE LÜGE begins with a simple promise: that consumers can save the world by choosing the right package in the supermarket. Werner Boote and Kathrin Hartmann take that promise seriously enough to follow it into the worlds of palm oil, electric cars, and corporate branding. What emerges is a documentary about green promises and the distance between image and reality. Boote moves through the film as the curious questioner, willing to seem naive if it helps expose a system built on reassurance, while Hartmann brings years of research into corporate misinformation. Together they press against the polished walls of public relations and meet people who resist environmental destruction. The film draws its energy from that clash between claims, facts, and lived consequences. The sharpest edge of DIE GRÜNE LÜGE is its criticism of a politics that hands ecological responsibility to individual shoppers while offering too little protection from misleading advertising. It shows how the language of sustainability can conceal rainforest loss, displacement, and damage that never appears in the shopping aisle. The film stays grounded in concrete cases, but its argument reaches wider: responsibility cannot simply be outsourced. As a follow-up to Plastic Planet and Population Boom, DIE GRÜNE LÜGE continues Boote's interest in systems that turn private decisions into public harm. The documentary relies on investigation, commentary, and the testimony of those affected by extraction and pollution rather than on spectacle. DIE GRÜNE LÜGE leaves viewers with a clear sense of how environmental costs are made invisible.