Chris Barsanti

What just might be the scariest movie of the year doesn’t feature skyscraper-crushing robots or species-annihilating bacteria. The setting of Jon Shenk’s documentary The Island President is the tranquil and paradise-like island nation of the Maldives. The star, Mohamed Nasheed, is a perky rights activist-turned crusading environmental politician. The villains are China, India, the United States; indeed, most of the nations of the world. The threat is rising sea levels that are already grinding away at the Maldives’ coastlines and will, within a matter of decades, drown the nation entirely. As Nasheed points out during a press interview in New York, his nation is just the canary in the coal mine: “Manhattan is as low as the Maldives”…