Former vice-president and climate change activist announces spiritual successor to his Oscar-winning documentary, set to debut at film festival’s new section

A follow-up to An Inconvenient Truth, the Oscar-winning documentary about climate change, will be among the opening night films at the forthcoming Sundance film festival.

Like its predecessor, the film will follow Al Gore as the former vice-president continues to make his case around the world that the world most wake up to the imminent threat of climate change.

“Now more than ever we must rededicate ourselves to solving the climate crisis. But we have reason to be hopeful; the solutions to the crisis are at hand,” Gore said in a statement released on Friday.

Rumors of a follow-up film have circulated since 2014, but on Friday it was confirmed that the film will be part of the festival’s The New Climate section, which features films that all have the climate or the environment at their core. The spiritual sequel comes 10 years after the original film debuted at Sundance and went on to win two Oscars, including best documentary.

It’s expected the film will be released in 2017 by Paramount. The company’s CEO Brad Grey said: “Al’s tireless efforts to bring about change continues to inspire all of us as we fight for the health of our world for future generations.”

Gore recently met with president-elect Donald Trump for a series of meetings, after which the former vice-president said he was hopeful that Trump, who has falsely claimed climate change was a Chinese hoax, would reverse his position.

“My message would be that despair is just another form of denial,” he said after the meeting. “There is no time to despair. We don’t have time to lick our wounds, to hope for a different election outcome.”

Gore also fronts the Climate Reality Project advocacy group, which recently hosted its sixth annual 24 Hours of Reality, a 24-hour live event which focused on he 24 largest national emitters of carbon dioxide in the world.