DCEFF 2024

<p>4DWN tells the unconventional and deeply personal story of a South Dallas skatepark whose mission is to change the lives of everyone who walks through the gate. The 4DWN skatepark is a resilience hub rooted in skate culture, tackling the challenges of food insecurity and social justice in one of the city&rsquo;s poorest communities.<br /> <br /> 4DWN is at once punk, irreverent, and authentic. But it&rsquo;s also organic, nurturing, and profound. The magic of this skatepark-turned-urban farm is brought to life through a beautiful, intimate mixed-media approach that pays homage to the canon of skate films that came before it. 4DWN chronicles the past and present lives of the Park&rsquo;s founders and one budding young skateboarder who finds kinship, camaraderie, and a reason to keep pushing.</p>

<p>ALL ILLUSIONS MUST BE BROKEN is a cinematic contemporization of the work of American cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker whose book THE DENIAL OF DEATH won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction in 1974. Becker&rsquo;s interdisciplinary exploration of human nature and his own personal testimony challenge us to move beyond our fears and see the beauty that surrounds our fragile lives.<br /> <br /> Increasingly, cultural &amp; virtual environments are replacing our actual, natural environment. In the process, as Becker&rsquo;s ideas help to show, we only further our tendencies toward self-deception. Part film essay, part verit&eacute; study, the narrative interleaves Becker&rsquo;s profound insights, contemporary interviews on the re-patterning power of screens, and scenes from a boyhood ages birth to 13.</p>

<p>An American Ascent documents the first African American expedition to tackle Denali, North America&#39;s highest peak and explores the complex relationship many African-Americans have with the outdoors. As the United States transitions to a &#39;minority majority&#39; nation, a staggering number of people of color do not identify with America&#39;s wild places. By embarking on the grueling multi-week climb of the 20,327ft Denali, nine African-American climbers set out to bridge this &#39;adventure gap&#39; - challenging outdated notions of what adventure looks like by changing the face of America&#39;s biggest and baddest mountain on the 100th anniversary of its first summit.</p>

<p>The sequel to the international mega-hit &#39;The March of the Penguins&#39; returns to Antarctica on an epic adventure with director Luc Jacquet as a familiar guide in the alien landscapes.</p>

<p>Alex Honnold (Free Solo) embarks on an epic quest of unclimbed walls in one of the most remote corners of Greenland, a country on the frontline of the climate crisis. Honnold has always dreamed of exploring Greenland and its unclimbed peaks. Now he and world-class climbers Hazel Findlay and Mikey Schaefer attempt to summit Ingmikortilaq, an unclimbed Arctic seacliff that rises out of the frozen wilderness and is nearly 1,000 feet higher than Free Solo&rsquo;s El Capitan. For Honnold, a long-time climate activist, this expedition is about more than just climbing, it is an opportunity to witness firsthand the impact of climate change on a wilderness that is vitally important to the future of the planet. With the help of Dr. He&iuml;di Sevestre, a glaciologist working with the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program, Greenlandic guide Adam Kjeldsen and renowned adventurer Aldo Kane, the team use a special radar to take real-time depth and density measurements of a rarely studied section of Greenland&rsquo;s ice cap.</p>

<p>On December 25, 2021, the world lost one of its greatest scientists and the &quot;godfather of biodiversity,&quot; Dr. Thomas Lovejoy. Join his family and several of his closest friends and colleagues on an educational journey and heartfelt mission of love and hope as they travel together to return Dr. Lovejoy&#39;s ashes to the magical place where he devoted his life to understanding and protecting the Amazon rainforest.</p>

<p>Ramata-Toulaye Sy&rsquo;s debut feature&nbsp;<strong>Banel &amp; Adama</strong>&nbsp;showcases the mythic love between the eponymous couple in a remote Senegalese village, but it is the conjunction in the title that is at the heart of this scorching romantic drama. &ldquo;Without Adama, you&rsquo;re nothing&rdquo;, quips Banel&rsquo;s twin brother, upset at his sister&rsquo;s fanatic attachment to her new husband.</p> <p>Adama, for his part, has turned down his hereditary right to be the village chief, content instead to live in marital bliss with Banel. Together, they work at unearthing a house buried in sand outside the village, hoping to carve out a private niche away from this community where everything unfolds in public spaces. However this spirit of independence won&rsquo;t be easily tolerated, and the village is soon visited upon by a deadly drought, severely straining the bond between the lovers.</p> <p>As Banel, Khady Mane traverses the terrains of infatuation, determination, obsession and guilt with conviction and an almost evangelical fervour. Her emotional capacities grow as the film itself expands from a gentle ode to teenage romance to an operatic saga of divine tribulations. Through her persistence,&nbsp;<strong>Banel &amp; Adama&nbsp;</strong>unveils a star-crossed love story of Biblical proportions.</p> <p><em>&ndash; Srikanth Srinivasan</em></p>

<p>BATSIES is a short, experimental doc that examines a woman&rsquo;s tender relationship with an animal that&rsquo;s quintessentially feared and loathed &ndash; the bat.</p> <p>Our protagonists, Sara Weaver and Sarah Fritts, are best friends and high-level bat researchers at Texas State University. These ladies have a wicked sense of humor, they curse like sailors, they&rsquo;re covered in tattoos, and consider themselves outliers within a male-dominated field.</p> <p>We follow their journey as they conduct cutting-edge bat research throughout rural Texas. Wind turbines are killing off bats at alarming rates, and Weaver and Fritts are working on the front lines to figure out why.</p> <p>The scientific community understands just how critical this research is: Bats save billions of dollars in agriculture costs by consuming insects that feed on crops. Regardless of their economic value, however, the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in deep public stigma towards bats that is now worse than ever.</p> <p>We will interweave these ladies&rsquo; research efforts, quirky friendship, and shared bat obsession throughout the film. BATSIES will serve a fresh take on saving a creature that&rsquo;s considered the ultimate outcast.</p>

<p>Filmed over the course of four consecutive years during record low annual precipitation in northern Kenya, BETWEEN THE RAINS is a feature collaboration with the Turkana-Ngaremara community that seeks to understand the experiences of a childhood caught within a traditional culture that is a casualty of climate change.</p>

<p>When a wild otter in desperate need of help washes up on his jetty in the remote Scottish islands of Shetland, Billy, his wife Susan, and their devoted sheepdog Jade find themselves with a unique new member of their family. From National Geographic and Silverback Films, &ldquo;Billy &amp; Molly: An Otter Love Story&rdquo; is a heart-warming story directed by Charlie Hamilton James and shot in 4K. This documentary film shows us how love can reawaken us to the beauty of nature.</p>

<p>A large contributor to the recent dramatic population loss of birds is window collisions. The people dedicated to saving injured birds provide us with hope for their future.<br /> <br /> Migration season is when the Chicago Collision Bird Monitors are the busiest as mother nature literally slams into the indoors. The volunteers arrive downtown before sunrise to gather birds that have flown into skyscrapers in the hours before they head to work.The unfortunate salvages are brought to the historic Field Museum, which contains thousands of colorful taxidermied skins, cryogenically frozen muscle tissue samples, and meticulously labeled skeletal remains. The ornithologists sort and catalog specimens for vital and unprecedented research.<br /> <br /> At the Willowbrook Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, the chirping, moving bags with their pecked holes all show signs of life. Veterinarians take us through tedious exams and capturing rogue birds. The final result of everyone&rsquo;s hard work is a joyful send off.</p>

<p>Burning Injustice is a powerful short documentary that follows the inspiring journey of Latino activists, John Mataka and Bianca Lopez, as they lead a fight against one of the last trash incinerators in California. Set in California&#39;s Central Valley, the film exposes the devastating health consequences of pollution and highlights their tireless efforts to close the facility for good. Through their unwavering determination, they call for environmental justice and a safer future for their community.</p>

<p>Coffee farms in Colombia exist in some of the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet. However, agriculture is putting pressure on that biodiversity that is causing catastrophic declines in migratory bird species. Farmers are working alongside Smithsonian scientists to come up with solutions that will be better for birds AND coffee.</p>

<p>Call of the Orcas explores urgent efforts to recover endangered Southern Resident Killer Whales of the Pacific Northwest, through the eyes of one of their human champions, researcher Ken Balcomb, who passed away in 2022. Balcomb&rsquo;s survey work over nearly fifty years helped people see these orcas as individuals, in family groups, and led to a subspecies listing under the US Endangered Species Act.<br /> <br /> Southern Resident orcas are distinctive for many reasons. They prey exclusively on salmon, and live in close proximity to people, including indigenous communities who see them as family. Despite an aggressive capture program five decades ago, mutual curiosity between the people of Puget Sound and Southern Resident Killer Whales continues, raising an urgent question for human residents of the Salish Sea. Can we learn to live in a way that sustains the orcas among us? This story profiles a researcher running out of time, while 75 remaining whales depend our action for survival.</p>

<p>Witness the extraordinary life of Dr. Lonnie Thompson, an explorer who went where no scientist had gone before and transformed our idea of what is possible. Daring to seek Earth&#39;s history contained in glaciers atop the tallest mountains in the world, Lonnie found himself on the frontlines of climate change&mdash;his life&#39;s work evolving into a salvage mission to recover these priceless historical records before they disappear forever.</p>

<p>Follow a novel experiment in the Maldives to regrow coral reefs, which offer protection, food and income. &quot;If we continue business as usual, 90 percent of the reef will be challenged and disappear by 2030,&quot; says former President Mohamed Nasheed. &quot;We are witnessing not just the death of an eco-system, but the death of a nation.&quot;</p>

<p>What goes into conducting a population census and how does it inform conservation decisions? And how is that information gathered for the fastest land animal on earth? Counting Cheetahs follows a team of biologists and volunteers in Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya as they begin a cheetah census to inform the Conservancy&#39;s future conservation efforts.</p>

<p>Deep sea mining is a serious threat to the ocean&#39;s ecosystem and climate stability. In a poetic dialogue between oceanographer &lsquo;Her Deepness&rsquo; Sylvia Earle and renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma, Deep Trouble explains how the ocean creates oxygen, sequesters carbon, regulates climate, and makes life possible on earth.</p>

<p>Examines the historical plight of Black farmers in the United States and the rising generation reclaiming their rightful ownership to land and reconnecting with their ancestral roots.<br /> <br /> As the co-founder of Soul Fire Farm in upstate New York, Leah Penniman finds strength in the deep historical knowledge of African agrarianism &ndash; agricultural practices that can heal people and the planet. Influenced and inspired by Karen Washington, a pioneer in urban community gardens in New York City, and fellow farmer and organizer Blain Snipstal, Leah galvanizes around farming as the basis of revolutionary justice.<br /> <br /> In 1910, Black farmers owned 14 percent of all American farmland. Over the intervening decades, that number fell below two percent, the result of racism, discrimination, and dispossession. The film chronicles Penniman and two other Black farmers&rsquo; efforts to reclaim their agricultural heritage. Collectively, their work has a major impact, as each is a leader in sustainable agriculture and food justice movements.</p>

<p>First We Bombed New Mexico follows Hispanic cancer survivor Tina Cordova who has catalyzed a movement seeking justice for forgotten residents of southern New Mexico. These, (mostly Hispanic and Native ) Americans suffer multigenerational cancers which they tie to the poisoning of their land and water by the Trinity Bomb.<br /> <br /> This is the story that Oppenheimer doesn&rsquo;t tell. Tina discovers that Manhattan Project physicians had urged General Groves to evacuate residents before the blast. Concerns about litigation trumped citizen health.<br /> <br /> Tina also discovers that baby deaths in New Mexico spiked directly after the blast.<br /> <br /> Citizens downwind of nuclear tests in other states have received reparations from Congress since 1990.<br /> <br /> Tina&#39;s goal is to have Congress extend the act before it expires in June so Hispanic and Native American New Mexicans, the original downwinders, also receive compensation.</p>

<p>When a university student struggling with an environmental studies assignment searches for inspiration for an assignment at an art gallery, she is magically transported into a painting and lands in 19th-century Japan. In Edo, today&rsquo;s Tokyo, she witnesses a range of everyday sustainable practices&ndash;&ndash;using ashes in the dyeing process, fertilizing fields with night soil, repurposing used kimonos into towels and rags&ndash;&ndash;that helped the country overcome environmental collapse.</p>

<p>This short film follows Chilean mycologist and National Geographic Explorer Giuliana Furci&rsquo;s search for new mushrooms in far southern Chile, on the main island of Tierra del Fuego. She&rsquo;s joined by biologist and author Merlin Sheldrake and mycologist Toby Kiers from SPUN, the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks, whose goal is to map the mycorrhizal networks of the world. Together, the three scientists illuminate how&mdash;through nutrient cycling and the essential relationships they form with plants&mdash;fungi underpin every ecosystem on Earth, and outline a strategy for greater fungal inclusion in conservation policy.</p>

<p>With Bj&ouml;rk as narrator and in IMAX 3D, we are taken on a fascinating journey of discovery into the world of fungi, which may hold new solutions to our biggest problems.</p>

<p>A journey into the heart of America&rsquo;s most iconic forests, GIANTS RISING reveals the secrets and the saga of the coast redwoods&mdash;the tallest and among the oldest living beings on Earth. It&rsquo;s an epic tale that explores the wonders of these silent giants and our dramatic, ever-evolving relationship with them. Living links to the past, redwoods also hold powers that may play a role in our future, including their ability to withstand fire and capture carbon, to offer clues about longevity, and even to enhance our own well-being. How do they do it &mdash;and how will redwoods keep working their magic as they&rsquo;re pushed to their limits?<br /> <br /> Through the voices of biologists, artists, Native peoples and others racing to understand and safeguard these trees, GIANTS RISING reveals the scientific wonders of redwoods, our deep cultural ties to them, and efforts to help these iconic forests overcome the legacy of logging that nearly wiped them out. It&rsquo;s a story that offers lessons about resilience and connection, and the promise of solutions that will help us ALL rise up from the past and face the challenges that lay ahead.</p>

<p>Stefan, a Romanian construction worker living in Brussels, is on the verge of moving back home. He cooks up a big pot of soup with leftovers in his fridge as a goodbye gift for friends and family. As he is about to leave, he meets a young Belgian-Chinese woman who is working in a little restaurant while researching her doctorate on mosses. Her attention to the near-invisible stops him in his tracks.</p> <p>A hunter-gatherer of beauty in urban landscapes, Bas Devos knows how to tell stories through images. Berlinale audiences beheld this talent in his films&nbsp;<em>Violet</em>&nbsp;(<em>Generation</em>, 2014) and&nbsp;<em>Hellhole</em>&nbsp;(<em>Panorama</em>, 2019). In&nbsp;<em>Here</em>, the Belgian filmmaker&rsquo;s ability to register the invisible and the untold performs many a small c. Unfolding in beautiful tableaux in 4:3 format, his work features characters in whose presence we want to feel the here and now, just as they do. Observing his central duo, played by the radiant Stefan Gota and Liyo Gong, as they discover each other, Devos&rsquo; gaze is as moving as it is delicate. And what more solid way for a bond to grow between two people than with their feet firmly rooted in Mother Nature&rsquo;s soft carpeting? It is more fragile than cement, but it is our true terrain.</p>

<p>After the untimely death of Pakistani-born oncologist Hassan Amjad, his daughter Ayne seeks a definitive solution to her father&#39;s unresolved dream of helping Minden, a former coal-company town polluted with carcinogenic PCBs. No stranger to audacious goals, Ayne hatches a plan to relocate Minden&#39;s 250 residents to a plot of land purchased in the wake of her father&#39;s passing.<br /> <br /> When Ayne encounters resistance from the community, she takes her plans statewide, landing a high-profile role as WV&#39;s State Health Officer in the early months of the pandemic. Ayne&#39;s star rises as she spearheads a much-lauded vaccine rollout, but the demands of her new position make it all but impossible to pursue her goal of moving Minden and her personal dream of raising a family of her own.<br /> <br /> In a last-ditch effort to finish her father&#39;s work, Ayne dispatches her personal lawyer to launch a class-action lawsuit against industry titans, the proceeds from which may serve as Minden&#39;s best hope of financing relocation. With personal and professional obligations mounting, Ayne must decide how much she is willing to sacrifice to make good on her late father&#39;s mandate to help others at all costs.</p>

<p>It&rsquo;s Bean Too Hot tells the story of farmers whose livelihoods are at stake as they need to quickly adapt to the changing conditions, and the heroes out there fighting for the future of coffee every day. This film shows the effect of climate change through the eyes of those who are feeling it the most. Coffee farmers that have had to struggle with the drastic effect of the changing weather affecting their production completely. But not all is lost! There are solutions that farmers can adapt to change their way of farming and save coffee for the future. By adopting sustainable practices, these solutions not only save your cup of coffee but also protect the environment in return.</p>

<p>Jane Goodall: Reasons For hope is an uplifting journey with stories to inspire people to make a difference in the world. Three different conservation stories illustrate Jane&#39;s pillars of hope.</p>

<p>JOJO celebrates a musical portrait of JoJo Nyaribo, a young nature enthusiast and wildlife advocate, as he explores the world of the Western Toad and its numerous threats. This story beautifully intertwines Jojo&#39;s love for nature with his quest to create awareness of a devastating fungus that is decimating amphibians worldwide. Through small, actionable steps such as cleaning his shoes and educating loved ones, Jojo discovers his role in decreasing the fungus&#39;s spread.</p>

<p>In the heart of British Columbia&rsquo;s Great Bear Rainforest, one Nation is reclaiming the power they held for millennia. As the impacts of colonial exploitation and mismanagement take an increasing toll on their territory, the Kitasoo Xai&rsquo;xais Nation finds strength in its stories and culture, emerging as a stewardship leader in a new age of reconciliation in Canada. A powerful story of resurgence, the weight of hereditary leadership, and the responsibility they carry into the modern world told through the eyes of elder and hereditary chief Nismuutk, Ernest Mason Jr., and the new young leaders following in his footsteps.</p>

<p>Central Appalachia is a place of mountains and myth. Director Elaine McMillion Sheldon knows this well, calling those mountains home. Coal has had a profound influence on this community&rsquo;s identity, but Sheldon dares to consider what future stories might look like out of the shadow of coal, now that relationships to coal are changing. She takes us on an alluring cinematic journey through the past, present, and future of Appalachia.&nbsp;</p> <p>Sheldon&rsquo;s distinct vision remixes present-day moments of life in a coal-mining town with archival footage and atmospheric invocations of the land to alchemize something new &mdash; a rare, nuanced depiction of this community. A young girl learning the story of coal anchors the journey while Sheldon&rsquo;s poetic voiceover guides us through the experience and an expressive score differentiates the reality of coal from a more imaginative world. The hybrid approach allows Sheldon to explore the act of storytelling itself and is a magical reclamation of the power of stories to shape how a region sees itself. The end of one story welcomes the beginning of another. &nbsp;</p>

<p>A story about one man and his best friend on the hunt for one of the greatest northern stories. A story about Ice Covered Grizzlies, about mighty Salmon and about the hardships of animals and photographer alike who are facing the unforgiving Beauty of a Yukon Winter</p>

<p>Unlikely friends Conrad Anker and Malik Martin bring something unique to each others lives as their paths cross within the world of climbing.</p>

<p>A Mirror of the Cosmos is a sci-fi feature documentary which explores how the Mar Menor lagoon, located in southeastern Spain and considered a beachside paradise, is being pushed by the climate crisis to the brink of extinction and beyond. Opening with a conversation between the moon and the sea about environmental violence, the film explores how the unlikely relationships between invasive blue crabs, nitrates, and mining deposits in Mar Menor deeply intertwine to tell the larger story of capitalism&rsquo;s extractive, cumulative effects on the environment over time, combined with record-setting temperatures and monsoon-like storms. The lagoon is a microcosm of the so-called Anthropocene, or &lsquo;the Age of Man&rsquo;. Ultimately, it asks what kinds of futures are possible, and can we adapt?</p>

<p>The Taiga, also known as the boreal forest, represents about 17% of the Earth&#39;s surface and has the highest density of rivers and natural springs in the world. In Mongolia, its primary forests and pure waters have kept an entire population nomadic on its lands for thousands of years.<br /> <br /> But for more than 30 years, the rich natural resources of these Mongolian lands have fallen prey to illegal hunters and miners, often from the local population. In just a few years, the country has witnessed an alarming collapse of its biodiversity. Faced with this worrying situation, the Mongolian Ministry of Environment created the &quot;Red Taiga&quot; Park in 2012, at the head of which it appointed ranger Jal Tumursukh.<br /> <br /> The mission of this former local hunter is now to enforce the law of environmental protection. A very delicate mission for a just cause to which the chief ranger is trying to rally more and more forest guards from the disgruntled local communities.</p>

<p>The Night Visitors is a movie about moths. In large and small fragments, looking both inward and out, through a critical lens that is by turns social and personal, the film closely examines these underknown creatures. While The Night Visitors is interested in moths as organisms, with fascinating life histories, staggering biodiversity, and a functional importance as indicators of climate change and habitat degradation, its engagement with them is not primarily entomological. Instead, the film looks at moths as aesthetic beings and as carriers of meaning, aiming for a deep encounter with the beauty and incommensurability of the profoundly other.</p> <p>The small hours of the night are threaded through with a sense of mortality and loss. Moths, with their trembling and exquisite impermanence, provide both a kind of solace and, in their diversity and difference, a focal point around which the desire to know can be organized.</p>

<p>The ocean, a force of nature, holds wonders and rich ecosystems. However, its resilience is continually eroded by human activity. In this sequel to the film EARTH SEEN FROM THE HEART (2018), the filmmakers invite us to discover and understand the marine environment&#39;s adaptability, as well as the threats it faces in the context of a climate crisis. Rich in insights from experts, environmental activists, explorers, and fishermen, this documentary is both a tribute to life and a warning about the impact of our ecological footprint.</p>

<p>In the mid-19th century, Okiku, a young woman, lives in a tenement row house among ordinary people in the sprawling city of Edo &ndash; known as Tokyo today. Okiku lives with her father, Genbei, a former samurai, now reduced to a penniless ronin, whom she supports by teaching children to read and write in a temple school. Two Manure Men, Yasuke, and his newly recruited partner, Chuji, regularly visit Okiku&rsquo;s tenement to collect the human manure from the outhouse the tenants share. Okiku, a young woman in her prime, seems to take a special interest in Chuji.</p>

<p>On Alaska&rsquo;s remote St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea, shy teenager Agra Chris Apassingok is the best hunter in his village, but warming seas have made the annual whale hunt, which supplies food and resources for his village for most of the year, that much tougher. When he proudly shares a hunting accomplishment on social media for his indigenous community, he becomes a target for online bullying that severely threatens his mental health. This is a stunning film of family, love, tradition, and self-determination, with a thrilling soundtrack by indigenous musicians. &ndash;&nbsp;<em>Jaie Laplante</em>&nbsp;</p>

<p>Follow the disappearance of the final Little Egg of the season in strange circumstances, leading Oona and her friends to embark on a race against time to try to save it before a big storm hits Puffin Rock and puts the island in danger.</p>

<p>Young women on a remote island off Iceland help lost puffins, who easily lose their bearings.&nbsp;<em>&ndash; DeWitt Davis</em></p>

<p>Series Description: Powerful female leaders sacrifice and show resilience to protect their families in the world&#39;s untamed regions. Angela Bassett narrates this tale highlighting matriarchies globally.<br /> <br /> Episode Description: The Ethiopian mountain world is ruled by two very different queens, but both are mothers raising daughters. A gelada monkey rules a tight-knit sisterhood, but with her only daughter on the cusp of adulthood, she must make great sacrifices for her child&rsquo;s future. On the plateau above, an Ethiopian wolf also has a daughter, but this mother must be ruthless to protect her own legacy.</p>

<p>The protagonist&#39;s walk down the memory lane, triggered by one glance at the rainbow, takes him back to his childhood, recalling events that shaped him into the artist he later became.</p>

<p>Miami is ground-zero for sea-level-rise. When residents of the Liberty Square public-housing community learn about a $300 million revitalization project in 2015, they know that their neighborhood is located on the highest-and-driest ground in the city. Now they must prepare to fight a new form of racial injustice - Climate Gentrification.</p>

<p>N&oacute;ouh&agrave;h-Toka&rsquo;na, known as swift fox in English, once roamed the North American Great Plains from Canada to Texas. Like bison, pronghorn and other plains animals, N&oacute;ouh&agrave;h-Toka&rsquo;na held cultural significance for the Native Americans who lived alongside them. But predator control programs in the mid-1900s reduced the foxes to just 10 percent of their native range.<br /> At the Fort Belknap Indian Community in Montana, members of the Aaniiih and Nakoda tribes are working with the Smithsonian&rsquo;s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute and other conservation partners to restore biodiversity and return N&oacute;ouh&agrave;h-Toka&rsquo;na to the land.</p>

<p>An intimate look at Indigenous culture and salmon fishing, with a focus on an Alaskan family that fights to defend their history, future, and lifestyle.&nbsp;<em>&ndash; Anita Raswant</em>&nbsp;</p>

<p>A creative documentary exploring our relationship with nature. Young birdwatchers, Mya and Arjun, feel the pressure of climate change and the biodiversity crisis greatly. Although they feel isolated and judged by others, they are determined to stand up for what they believe in; coming of age in the age of climate chaos.</p> <p>Supported by BFI Doc Society through Made of Truth, in collaboration with The Guardian Documentaries.</p>

<p>In sym-bee-o-sis, scientists discover that the alliance between bees and plants depends on an unexpected third partner: microbes! But the chemicals we use in agriculture are putting this ancient partnership at risk.</p>

<p>In 1971 John Francis, known the world over as &lsquo;Planetwalker,&rsquo; witnessed an oil tanker collision in the San Francisco Bay. The sight of oiled birds on the shoreline caused him to give up motorized transport and rely solely on his own two feet. Months after that he took a vow of silence convinced that listening rather than adding fuel to any fire was the way ahead.<br /> <br /> He didn&rsquo;t talk, but he kept on walking clear across the country and back again. During the next seventeen silent years, he listened and studied the world around him. Over many miles, his idea of environmentalism changed. At the core of his emerging belief were the people he met, talked to, and broke bread with.</p>

<p>&ldquo;Their Pollution, Our Solution&rdquo; is an environmental justice (EJ) anthem created by KXNG Crooked and Moving Forward Network (MFN) member Dr. Bruce Strouble. This song focuses on the need to protect communities most burdened by the cumulative impacts caused by the freight transportation system. We must take action and center the voices of EJ communities impacted with a clear goal to eliminate pollution across the freight system.<br /> <br /> This song features the voices and illustrations of KXNG Crooked and MFN members: mark! Lopez (East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice), Dr. Bruce Strouble (Citizens for a Sustainable Future), Kim Gaddy (South Ward Environmental Alliance &amp; Clean Water Action), Tolani Taylor (Clean Water Action), Brenda Soto (People&#39;s Collective for Environmental Justice), Rayan Makarem (CleanAirNow), and Dr. Mildred McClain (Harambee House/Citizens for Environmental Justice). This song features a speech by mark! Lopez at the Goldman Environmental Prize Award Ceremony.</p>

<p>Acid mine drainage is a pervasive problem in American Appalachia, poisoning streams and killing wildlife. The technology and funding to remove these pollutants and bring life back to streams just didn&#39;t exist, that is until fine art painter and professor John Sabraw rallied a team to address the issue in their local stream and developed a breakthrough process to upcycle pollutants into paint pigments. It&#39;s amazing what humans are capable of when their actions are relentlessly committed, creative and cooperative.</p>

<p>Norfolk, Virginia is sinking. The already insufficient sea wall ends where a public housing project, St. Paul&rsquo;s, begins. St. Paul&rsquo;s housing projects&#39; residents are Black people. Norfolk is home to the world&rsquo;s largest naval base and there is currently no public plan to prevent it from going underwater.<br /> <br /> Instead, the local government, in partnership with federal agencies, is investing in what is labeled a &ldquo;climate resilience&rdquo; plan to tear down public housing and redevelop what is an historic Black community, the St. Paul&rsquo;s district. Underwater Projects unpacks this redevelopment plan from the perspective of community leaders and members, government officials, scientists, and climate, and national security experts.</p>

<p>For Latino conservationist and angler Jr Rodriguez to become &ldquo;like the pictures he saw in magazines,&rdquo; he had to leave behind what he loved the most. By juxtaposing Jr&rsquo;s origins in Houston, Texas, and his current home in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, we share his journey of learning to love the outdoors and what it can be like to participate in outdoor sports in Western mountain towns as a person of color.</p>

<p>We Are Guardians follows Indigenous forest guardian Mar&ccedil;al Guajajara and activist Puyr Temb&eacute; as they fight to protect their territories from deforestation, an illegal logger who has no choice but to cut the forest down, and a large landowner at the mercy of thousands of invaders and extractive industry. Through intimate, character focused storytelling, the film brings the issues to the forefront &mdash; from the science of the Amazon Rainforest and its pivotal role in our global climate stability to the economic drivers of deforestation. The film weaves together politics, history, economics, science, and consciousness, providing an in-depth exploration of this incredibly complex and critical situation &mdash; the origins and the impact of which ripple out far beyond the boundaries of the Amazon itself. Directed by Indigenous activist Edivan Guajajara and environmental filmmakers Chelsea Greene and Rob Grobman; produced by Academy Award winner Fisher Stevens, with Executive Producer Leonardo DiCaprio .</p>

<p>If we pay enough attention to the ordinary, we see the extraordinary. The shipping container is an accidental icon of our modern age: the eight-foot-by-forty-foot corrugated steel box that brings the world to our doorstep. It brings all our hearts&rsquo; desires&rsquo;, available for purchase. And it brings us complicity in the global supply chains, and all the economic, ecological, technological, and political systems that forge those chains, as those great container ships link maker and user, buyer and seller, China and America together across the vast distances of the lawless sea. The design studio LOT-EK is a visionary practice at the intersection of art and architecture, that specializes in upcycling, which is the art and science of repurposing, remaking, rethinking, reimagining. Of using old things in new ways. The shipping container is the thing that has captured their imagination for over a quarter-century: they have remade containers into homes, schools, galleries, libraries, and more. With hundreds of millions of obsolete and unused containers around the world, this is a new and necessary architecture of the future, that repairs and regenerates the unnatural environment that we have inherited from the past. WE START WITH THE THINGS WE FIND is a feature-length documentary of this vision, and of the soulful lifelong partnership of the people, designers Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano, behind it.</p>

<p>Amid collapsing biodiversity worldwide, Mary Reynolds of Ireland is building a movement to turn gardeners into guardians of the planet by each returning their own patch of land to nature, and by restoring hope that individual action can create lasting change.</p>

<p>Based on Isabella Tree&rsquo;s best-selling book by the same title, Wilding tells the story of a young couple that bets on nature for the future of their failing, four-hundred-year-old estate. The young couple battles entrenched tradition, and dares to place the fate of their farm in the hands of nature. Ripping down the fences, they set the land back to the wild and entrust its recovery to a motley mix of animals both tame and wild. It is the beginning of a grand experiment that will become one of the most significant re-wilding experiments in Europe.</p>

<p>Vidal Merma, a Peruvian Indigenous journalist, risks his life daily to secure a future where his son, Erik, can savor the simple joy of drinking clean water. Wings of Dust illuminates a father&#39;s sacrifice, community resilience, and the unwavering human spirit in the face of environmental injustice.</p>

<p>Steven Fuller has been a winter caretaker at Yellowstone National Park for the past 50 years &mdash; but as the impact of the climate crisis intensifies, both he and Yellowstone face an unprecedented threat to their future.</p>

<p>Wood Turtles: Conserving A Rhode Island Treasure explores the efforts to study one of Rhode Island&rsquo;s most endearing species: the elusive Wood Turtle. Produced in partnership with Roger Williams Park Zoo and Rhode Island Division of Wildlife.</p>

<p>Global warming, the desire to change the rules of the system and George the unbeliever with his own eyes. How to defend a visionary plan to solve the climate crisis in the face of political and economic chaos? Father, material physicist, dealing with (not only) global problems; the daughter of a documentary filmmaker, but also a teacher, singer or artist. An idealistic idea of ​​a genius gentleman, an effort to spread his vision, to open the eyes of more people. A documentary shot at home and with the honest reality of an ordinary, extraordinary family. Jiř&iacute; Svoboda presents a plan for the introduction of a global carbon tax, he thinks that he could improve the ecological situation with his solution, but how to get the environment to listen?</p>