The Weather Diaries is an intimate chronicle of two simultaneous histories: on the one hand the darkly cataclysmic impacts of climate change and the extinction crisis on the forest ecosystems around Sydney, and on the other, the development of Drayton’s daughter, Imogen Jones, from child to adult. Filmed over six years, The Weather Diaries reaches its climax in 2020, as temperatures soar, bushfires rage, and flying fox pups die in record numbers. Drayton ruminates on our failure to value these essential pollinators and the forests they sustain, and reflects on the implications for her daughter Imogen, a girl long inspired by Studio Ghibli’s Princess Mononoke, who’s emerging from the classical confines of the Conservatorium High School to embark on a career as an electronic pop artist. The film strikes a hard-won balance of optimism and pessimism, fear and hope, melancholia and illumination.