Michele Borzoni & Rocco Rorandelli – Silent Springs

Le livre

A radical portrait of youth climate activism across Europe, as a generation steps onto the public stage to fight for its own future. Silent Springs traces non-violent direct action as young climate activists organise across borders in the face of accelerating ecological collapse and tightening state repression. Moving between countries and movements, the project maps a shared urgency shaped by parallel crises and collective resistance. Working in a rigorous, restrained documentary style edged with constant tension, Italian photographic duo Michele Borzoni and Rocco Rorandelli continue their critical investigative practice to reveal the discipline, ingenuity and choreography behind climate justice movements including Extinction Rebellion, Ende Gelände, Code Rouge, Last Generation and Soulèvements de la Terre. Against a backdrop of escalating climate catastrophe – alongside mounting institutional hostility and social apathy – Silent Springs documents these groups as they build road blockades, occupy campuses, enter coal mines and establish makeshift camps in defence of a shared horizon. Presented as a contemporary manifesto, Borzoni and Rorandelli combine photographs tracing the stages of action, from planning and encampment through police confrontation and dispersal, with a glossary that breaks down the language, tactics and ethical frameworks of climate action to reveal how resistance is sustained and justified from within. Borrowing its title from Rachel Carson’s seminal 1962 book, but reframed in the plural, Silent Springs captures the scale of mass mobilisation alongside the lived reality of those involved to explore the hopes, relationships and informal ecosystems that bind these young activists together. What emerges is a record of young people choosing to stand their ground with their bodies and their voices, insisting on a future that institutions persistently fail to safeguard.