Film
Gasland
Gasland is a galvanizing documentary about hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and its environmental consequences across America. Josh Fox investigates what happens when energy companies lease rural land, drilling for natural gas and leaving behind contaminated water supplies and damaged communities. It's urgently partisan—this is advocacy cinema—but visually striking and genuinely disturbing. For anyone concerned about environmental policy or corporate accountability.
If you liked this
The China Syndrome1979
A thriller about a nuclear plant cover-up that taps the same vein of corporate malfeasance and environmental risk, with the same urgent desire to make you angry about things you didn't know to worry about.
But It's a 1979 Hollywood film, so the pacing and dialogue have aged in ways that can feel theatrical compared to modern documentary restraint.
An Inconvenient Truth2006
Al Gore's climate documentary uses similar emotional and visual strategies to make a scientific argument personal and undeniable. If Gasland moved you, this extends the concern to a planetary scale.
But It's now fifteen years old and some of its urgency has been blunted by time; the crisis it warned about has only deepened, which can feel depressing rather than galvanizing.
Spotlight2015
A methodical investigation into institutional wrongdoing and cover-up, with the same patient determination to expose what powerful people want hidden. Enormously satisfying in a different register.
But It's a procedural about journalism, not about the environment itself, so it lacks Gasland's visceral connection to the land and the people living on it.
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The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
The Ballad of Little Jo1993
Both are fierce defenses of the right to inhabit and use land on one's own terms, in conflict with forces that would extract value and move on.
A revisionist Western about a woman who disguises herself as a man to survive on frontier land, reclaiming a landscape and identity against the grain of history. It's a narrative film that asks the same question Gasland does: who owns America's land, and at what cost?
But It's a period drama, not a documentary, and its concerns are personal and philosophical rather than immediately political—you have to meet it halfway.
More like this (7)
Erin Brockovich2000
A true story of a legal battle against a corporation poisoning groundwater. It has Gasland's moral clarity and personal stakes, wrapped in an engaging courtroom narrative.
But It's ultimately more optimistic and conventional than Gasland—it's a David-beats-Goliath story, which can feel comforting rather than enraging.
The Corporation2003
A searching documentary about corporate power and accountability, examining the legal structures that let companies externalize harm. Broader in scope than Gasland, more theoretical but equally indicting.
But At nearly two and a half hours, it's dense and philosophical rather than emotionally direct; it requires patience and intellectual engagement.
Food, Inc.2008
Another accessible documentary investigating how corporations shape American land and food systems for profit, with the same mix of personal stories and systemic critique.
But The industrial agriculture focus means it lacks Gasland's geographical specificity and local character—it's about systems, not communities.
The West Wing1999
A procedural drama about government and policy-making that often grapples with environmental and corporate regulation, asking how change actually happens in a broken system.
But It's idealistic and often optimistic about institutions in ways that might feel naive after watching Gasland's account of regulatory capture.
Dark Waters2019
A legal thriller about DuPont pollution and its cover-up, based on a true story. It has Gasland's moral weight and the satisfaction of an investigator pursuing the truth.
But As a narrative film with star power, it's slicker and more dramatic than a documentary, which some find less credible or less urgently real.
The Big Green1995
A sports comedy about environmental activism and community organizing, using humor to make environmental concerns feel alive and worth fighting for.
But It's a light family film from the nineties, so tonally it's worlds away from Gasland's gravity—the contrast might feel jarring or trivializing.
Synecdoche, New York2008
Both are investigations into deception and the gap between representation and reality; Gasland shows you polluted water, Synecdoche shows you how meaning itself becomes unmoored.
A hallucinatory, deeply strange film about a man building a replica of the world inside a warehouse—a meditation on scale, authenticity, and what gets lost when we try to represent reality. It sounds nothing like Gasland, but it shares an obsession with the gap between what we're told and what's true.
But It's deliberately difficult, nonlinear, and metaphorical to the point of confusion. If you want direct argument, this will frustrate you profoundly.
People
Cast
Josh FoxSelf
Maurice HincheySelf- Pat FernelliSelf - Resident
- Ron CarterSelf - Resident
- Jean CarterSelf - Resident
- Norma FiorentinoSelf - Resident
- Debbie MaySelf - Resident
- Debbie MaySelf - Resident
- Mike MarkhamSelf
- Dave NeslinSelf
Recommended by
The Devil We Know, Landman, Bhopali, Pump, Poverty, Inc., A Fierce Green Fire, A Crude Awakening, Who Killed the Electric Car?, Public Trust, The Big Fix, Tapped, The Last Mountain