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A follow-up to "An Inconvenient Truth" — one of the most impactful documentaries ever made about the environment — will open the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, bringing former Vice President Al Gore along with it.

Sundance organizers announced Friday that the new documentary, whose title has yet to be announced, will be the first Day One film to screen Thursday, Jan. 19, at the Eccles Center Theatre in Park City to kick off the festival.

The movie will also kick off "The New Climate," an initiative starting this year to raise awareness and spark conversation about environmental issues. Thirteen other documentary films and virtual-reality presentations already announced are part of that initiative, a partnership of the Sundance Institute and The Redford Center, a San Francisco-based nonprofit group that encourages filmmakers to tell stories about environmental issues.

"I believe that storytelling is the greatest platform for getting people to care and take action on some of the most pressing issues of our time," Robert Redford, the Sundance Institute's founder, said in a prepared statement. "Amid escalating threats to our environment, independent perspectives are adding the depth and dimension needed for us to find common ground and real solutions."

The movie aims to show the escalation of climate change and how close scientists are to finding solutions. The film is directed by Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk, who made the cyberbullying documentary "Audrie & Daisy" that debuted at Sundance in 2016. They also directed "The Island President," a 2011 documentary that profiled former Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed, who raised the alarm about how rising sea levels was making his island nation gradually disappear.

As part of "The New Climate," the festival's most prominent panel discussion, called "The Power of Story," will focus on the environment. The panel will consist of Gore, Nasheed, social entrepreneur and philanthropist Jeff Skoll, documentary producer Heather Rae (who has recently been active in the protests over the Dakota Access pipeline in North Dakota), and environmentalist, scientist and TV presenter Dr. David Suzuki. The panel will be moderated by journalist Amy Goodman, anchor of the "Democracy Now!" broadcast.

The "Power of Story" panel is set for Sunday, Jan. 22, at Park City's Egyptian Theatre, and will be streamed live on sundance.org.

"An Inconvenient Truth," directed by Davis Guggenheim and released in 2006, featured Gore delivering a detailed presentation about the escalation of global climate change. The movie won two Academy Awards: Best Documentary, and Best Original Song (for Melissa Etheridge's theme "I Need to Wake Up").

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