Degree of Certainty Brings a Climate Cover-Up to Flickers

A promising new job can get complicated quickly when the company has already mapped the climate crisis and would rather keep that information in-house. That’s the dilemma at the center of Degree of Certainty, Simon Schneider’s short film about a young risk analyst working for a major American oil company in 1982. When the company’s own researchers predict a rapid rise in global temperatures, the career he’s worked toward suddenly comes with a choice he can’t ignore: protect his future or challenge the institution offering it to him.

The film makes its American premiere during Flickers’ Rhode Island International Film Festival, bringing that decades-old decision to a coastal state where rising seas, flooding, and increasingly severe weather already feel close to home.

“When I first learned about how, 50 years ago, American oil corporations not only discovered the climate crisis but also decided to deny their findings, it felt like one of the biggest stories of our time,” Schneider says. What surprised him almost as much was how rarely that history enters the broader climate conversation.

Rather than filling the film with executives explaining policy around a conference table, Schneider places the discovery in the hands of someone who’s still trying to prove he belongs there. The young analyst wants the respected job and the future attached to it. Then an internal report makes every sensible career move feel a little less innocent.

“He is at a point in his life where the decision of whether to be complicit or stand up against an unjust system is ahead of him,” Schneider says.

The film carries the tight, uneasy mood of a corporate conspiracy thriller. Routine conversations begin to sound loaded. Scientific findings become evidence, and professional loyalty starts to feel more like a trap. The question isn’t whether the company understands what’s happening. It’s what the people inside the building will do now that they know.

One detail from Schneider’s research proved especially difficult to shake. Beginning in the 1950s, major oil corporations helped fund early climate research. By the late 1970s, their scientists had produced remarkably accurate predictions about rising global temperatures. The information wasn’t missing. The companies had to decide what to do with it.

That conflict shaped the title, too. “The most prominent tactic of climate deniers is to spread doubt about the certainty of the scientific results at hand,” Schneider explains. Waiting for perfect proof can sound cautious. It can also keep action conveniently out of reach.

Schneider developed Degree of Certainty as his AFI Conservatory thesis film with support from Amazon MGM Studios. The project later received the Young Director Award - Silver at Cannes Lions in 2026. He’s now expanding the short into a feature, but he hopes Rhode Island audiences leave talking about responsibility, politicized science, and how climate action can still come from “a place of hope and empowerment.” Degree of Certainty screens Saturday, August 8 at 6:30 PM as part of the Pivotal Moments shorts program at Apple Cinemas Providence Place, Cinema 6, located at 10 Providence Place. To learn more about the film, visit degreeofcertainty.xyz or follow @degreeofcertainty_film on Instagram. For tickets, the complete Flickers schedule, and more information, visit Film-Festival.org.