Disability, Climate, and the Stories We Still Aren’t Telling
Climate stories are incomplete when disability is missing. This proposed panel for the Climate Film Festival in September 2026, as envisioned by ReelAbilities International, uses the short film Iron Lung (2024), directed by Andrew Reid, as the entry point for a timely conversation about disability, climate storytelling, emergency preparedness, environmental justice, and public policy. The film follows a polio survivor and her sister during an unexpected blackout as they fight to keep an iron lung operating, opening up urgent questions about fragile infrastructure, care, interdependence, power loss, communication, and who is considered before disaster strikes.
As climate events increase and intensify, disabled people are too often among the first harmed and the last included in planning, storytelling, journalism, and policy conversations. This program reveals what is missed when climate filmmakers, journalists, advocates, funders, and programmers miss when disability is treated as an afterthought, and what new, exciting, and essential possibilities and opportunities emerge when disabled people are valued and meaningfully engaged as storytellers, experts, witnesses, artists, organizers, and leaders.
The session will begin with a screening of Iron Lung, followed by a discussion moderated by ReelAbilities, including the Disabled Journalists Association, reps from the film industry, and leading environmental justice/policy voices. Key topics will include the need for more disability-inclusive climate storytelling, emergency planning, media responsibility, environmental justice, and how to move beyond “vulnerable populations” framing toward more accurate, useful, and compelling narratives.
The intended audience includes filmmakers, journalists, climate advocates, disability advocates, programmers, funders, policy professionals, educators, and general festival attendees. Participants will leave with a sharper understanding of why disability belongs at the center of climate storytelling. It will provide research data, including practical suggestions on how to move from ideas to inclusive action in future films, reporting, programming, and climate action.
Featured Speakers:
Moderator: Ayo Oti, Independent Impact Producer
Marianne Engelman-Lado, Director - Environmental Justice, NYU School of Law
(tbc), Disabled Journalist Association
Isaac Zablocki, CEO - ReelAbilities International
By attending, you consent to being photographed, filmed, and/or otherwise recorded. Your entry constitutes your consent to such photography, filming, and/or recording and to any use, in any and all media, in perpetuity, of your appearance, voice, and name for any purpose whatsoever in connection with the event.