In Simon Schneider’s Degree of Certainty, knowing the truth and acting on it are two very different things.
Set in 1982, the 16-minute short follows Jackson Miller (Trace Guzmán), a young risk analyst at a major U.S. oil company facing mounting pressure as plunging oil prices cost the corporation millions. Looking for a way to prove his value, Jackson instead discovers troubling research from the company’s own climate scientists projecting a rapid rise in global temperatures. The findings present both the company and Jackson with a choice: confront what the science warns them about, or protect the business built around the very industry contributing to the problem.
Inspired by true events, Schneider’s AFI thesis film, screening at HollyShorts 2026, uses that conflict to examine how corporate self-interest, individual ambition, and moral compromise can collide, and how decisions made behind closed doors decades ago continue to resonate amid today’s climate crisis.
Here, Schneider discusses the history behind the film, recreating the 1980s on a student budget and the morality plaguing the climate crisis conversation.
DEADLINE: First, I want to ask, since this is your AFI thesis film. How did you end up at AFI?
SIMON SCHNEIDER: I’m from Germany. I grew up there. I’m the son of a psychologist and a judge, and I was brought up in East Germany. That background taught me at a young age that change and the fight for an equal, more just system are not only possible but necessary. That’s why I’ve always been drawn to political and sociopolitical storytelling. So, I studied filmmaking in Cologne for my bachelor’s degree. My thesis film there won a bigger award in Germany, and I used it as my application film for American film schools because it had always been a dream of mine to study in the U.S. I applied to AFI and got in, which was a dream come true. I studied there starting in 2023, and I just graduated with my thesis film, and I finished it in December last year. That’s how the German ended up in Hollywood.
DEADLINE: Where did the idea for this short come from?
SCHNEIDER: In my work, I’m always drawn to understanding how the world we live in works on a systematic level and how it ended up this way. I’m fascinated by trying to put my mind in the rooms where decisions are being made and seeing how powerful people make decisions. When I first read about this story, I was aware that the big oil corporations were involved in climate-change denial. But what was very new and fascinating to me was that they were actually major drivers of climate science in the first place.
Besides NASA, these were institutions in the 1970s that funded climate science very heavily, mainly to discover oil, which was interesting and ironic. The more I researched, the more I found a tale that I tried to put into those 16 minutes. It’s a story that spans three or four decades, and it’s ongoing. You have an institution that is fully based on science; they’re science companies, in the end, with very innovative products, and then they turn against their own scientists and their own research because it becomes threatening to their own interests.
That was very fascinating to me because it’s not only a big explanation for why we ended up in the position we’re in, but it’s also a tale about what happens every day and what I think we feel every day: how an institution turns against its own values. When we look back at pivotal moments in history, we can make predictions or decisions about how we should act in the future. That fascinated me, even though it’s such a huge story and it’s rare to tackle something like that in a student film.
DEADLINE: What were some of your inspirations for the short?
SCHNEIDER: The conspiracy political thriller is its own genre. We watched a lot of films from that era. All the President’s Men was a big one because it shows the process of uncovering something big. Margin Call was very influential for the way it dealt with the financial crisis, and Spotlight was another. We felt those films tell stories about groups of people trying to uncover something systematically, or about how a system deals with an issue, rather than focusing purely at the individual level. We were curious about films that show how systems play against each other, like journalism versus corporations. That was an interesting angle for us, and those movies were the most influential ones.
DEADLINE: Outside of the political wheelings and dealings, I was really impressed by the costumes, make-up and hair. Discuss the collaboration with your craft teams.
SCHNEIDER: For us, it was super important to try to be as period-accurate as possible while being on a student budget. As you can imagine, that’s always a challenge. I was blessed with a great team. Coleen Chan, our costume designer, did a fantastic job, as did Jessica Burnam, our production designer, and Brandy Marlin, our head makeup artist. We all looked very closely at references from the 1980s, especially those big corporations at the time, particularly oil corporations that were on the brink of becoming what they are today while also trying to be very cutting-edge for their time. That was exactly the period we were trying to nail. We did hair and makeup tests to make sure everything looked as period-accurate as possible.
For the costumes, we were also blessed to be shooting in Los Angeles, where you have a lot of options for vintage clothes that are actually from that time and have the right fabrics. The same goes for the prop houses we used in LA. You can actually find props from the period. A lot of the work was about building this world convincingly, seeing what the locations we secured offered, and figuring out how we could add to them to build it.
DEADLINE: The topic of this film is so relevant for today. What was particularly challenging about weaving this story together?
SCHNEIDER: Besides the budget, the first challenge was the writing. How do you tell climate stories? One reason we don’t see as many climate stories is because it’s particularly difficult. The climate crisis happens invisibly, and we have to find a way to make it visible in a movie while keeping it gripping and engaging. That was the biggest challenge at the writing level: fitting the complexity and the entertainment into 16 minutes of a short film. In the end, it’s people talking in a room, so how do you make that cinematic?
The second challenge, also in the writing, was figuring out how to balance everything we found in our research. All of this is based on true events. There are publicly accessible research reports where you can read about these things happening within these companies. How do you bring that into a fictional setting that is concise but truthful? At a production level, it was about conveying that world convincingly and finding an emotional angle for the audience in a story like this. Those were the things I was trying to find the right angle into as a writer-director.
DEADLINE: Something that really struck me was the turn the lead makes by the end of the short. Throughout the film, the corporation constantly looks for ways to justify not making changes. What do you want people to take away from that ending?
SCHNEIDER: My goal was to tell a story about a young man who, I think, a lot of young people will face this, and every person will face this at some point in their career: How far do I go in order to act upon my values, and how much do I go against them to make money or to be a part of a prestigious company?
That’s the pivotal moment he’s facing, which I found relatable as a young man in the early stage of my career as well. He knows what they’re doing is wrong, but then he decides to stay at the company. We see he’s becoming part of the propaganda machine that’s starting to kick off. But isn’t this a weird place? On the one hand, he tries to make change and tries to lead the company into a better path. On the other hand, he’s just being used by the corporation.
That’s what the ending tells us. It’s not an uplifting ending. You don’t leave the movie feeling hopeful about change. That’s something I would love to explore more in a feature-film version that I’m currently working on with my producer, Maxwell Kagan, to go more into what happens after that and what the fight could look like in an engaging way.
For the short, it’s about understanding and recognizing that these were decisions made, and that we, as people, have a chance to make decisions ourselves. We are in control of our own decisions. If we don’t want those decisions to be made, we have to make different choices. It’s more about how not to do it and how not to end up in the position we’re in.
DEADLINE: There’s something very realistic about that ending. In a lot of climate stories, there’s almost an expectation that the takeaway is, “Everyone go recycle.” But this feels more complicated and grounded in reality.
SCHNEIDER: I think it’s even true on the corporate side. Those corporations had huge research programs in renewable energy at that time. The pitch the character makes in the middle of the film, in the boardroom, that they should transition to the frontier of this new technology was something they actually could have done.
But as we hear from the CEO, and as the arguments change throughout the short, he makes the same decision: “I’m not the energy minister. I’m not the health minister. My job is to make this company prosperous. They’re in this oil crisis that we’re weirdly facing now as well. I tried to show a system where everyone isn’t necessarily evil. They’re just doing their jobs. And by doing their jobs well, we end up in the circumstances that we live in.
DEADLINE: Is this your first time out on the Oscar-qualifying film circuit? I know you have HollyShorts coming.
SCHNEIDER: Yeah, we just hit up a festival in Rhode Island. Now HollyShorts. We’ll also be screening at the Climate Film Festival in New York in September. I’m very excited because that’s where the crowd is for this film.
We also got into Bengaluru, the Oscar-qualifying festival in India, and Aesthetica, the BAFTA-qualifying festival in the U.K. Those are some of the new things that are happening. I was on a festival circuit in Germany before, but not in the U.S. and not as international as it is right now. It just started, so I’m very excited about it.
SCHNEIDER: My debut feature, Unter Mietern, has just received full production funding in Germany with production scheduled for Fall 2027. I’m developing that along with a feature adaptation of Degree of Certainty with Maxwell Kagan producing.
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