NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- Long before she began making waves as an environmental activist, Greta Thunberg was just an average Swedish teen.
In the Hulu documentary "I Am Greta," which will be available to stream on Friday, not only does the world get a glimpse into her personal life, but for the first time it also gets to see just how the outspoken adolescent became one of the faces at the forefront of the fight against climate change.
Two years ago, no one knew who Thunberg was - not even film's director Nathan Grossman. In an exclusive interview with WINS though, he actually states that the project "started with a tip."
Grossman says that a friend of his at the time, who was also a friend of Thunberg's family, was spreading the word about the then 16-year-old's planned strike outside of the Swedish Parliament to bring awareness to the recent, unusually warm summer weather in Europe.
What was initially planned as a small one-to-two-day shoot eventually turned into a full fledged project after countries like Belgium and Australia began to hold their own Thunberg-inspired strikes with much larger turnouts. By the following winter, Grossman knew that he was witnessing the start of something special.
As Grossman says another journalist pointed out, the film often feels like a "prequel to a hero's journey." It's literal history in the making and, in addition to capturing it, he's just as happy to have been a part of it. Grossman followed Thunberg for months filming everything, from intimate family moments to first time meetings with the Terminator - yes, Arnold Schwarzenegger himself - and the Pope, to speeches all across Europe.
One of the film's biggest highlights is a tense two-week-long transatlantic boat trip to the Empire State. The sequence is one of a few where Thunberg is visibly afraid, but Grossman admits that he was also terrified. He says that it made him realize just how small all human beings were in comparison to nature. He refers to it as a metaphor for both Greta and the film's most exigent message.
When asked what he wants people take away from the film, Grossman says he hopes, "that it shows [the world] the power of activism." He also hopes that responsible adults realize that climate change, "isn't an issue that should be shoved onto the shoulders of the young... They never asked for it."