UK Green Film Festival: Watch the Best of Environmental Films Nationwide

 In the week following the Global Climate Change Marches, the state of our planet’s environment is, at last, increasingly at the forefront of everyone’s minds. Film is one of the most powerful platforms to illustrate the importance of protecting our unique and beautiful world, how to go about doing that, as well as evidencing the damage that has already been done. The mission of the UK Green Film Festival (UKGFF) is to enable as many people nationwide to be able to watch the most current, vital and very best of today’s environmental films. 

This year, UKGFF is running from 30th October – 9th November with screenings confirmed across the country in cities including Manchester, London, Bristol and Glasgow.  The line-up includes a highly-acclaimed list: The Green Lie, directed by Werner Boote; Earth directed by Nikolaus Geyrhalter; Welcome to Sodom directed by Florian Weigensamer & Christian Krönes, Let There Be Light directed by Mila Aung-Thwin and The Serengeti Rules directed by Nicolas Brown. For the full schedule, visit www.ukgreenfilmfestival.org

The Programme:

The Green Lie – Austria – Dir. Werner Boote

Environmentally friendly electric cars, sustainably produced food products, fair production processes: Hurray! If everything the corporations tell us is true, we can save the world through our purchasing decisions alone. A popular and dangerous lie. Are the industry´s “green products” nothing more than a sales strategy? In his new documentary film, Werner Boote shows us, together with environmental expert Kathrin Hartmann, how we can protect ourselves. They easily banter, they agree to disagree and ultimately bring freshness to a never-ending debate. See trailer here

Earth – Germany – Dir. Nikolaus Geyrhalter

Several billion tons of earth are moved annually by humans – with shovels, excavators or dynamite. Nikolaus Geyrhalter observes people in mines, quarries, large construction sites in a constant struggle to transform the planet. See trailer here

Welcome to Sodom – Austria/Ghana – Dir. Florian Weigensamer & Christian Krönes

Accra is proven to be one of most poisonous places. It is the largest electronic waste dump in the world. About 6000 women, men and children live and work here. They call it SODOM. Every year about 250.000 tons of sorted out computers, smartphones, air conditions tanks and other devices from a far away electrified and digitalized world end up here. Shipped to Ghana illegally. Everybody here in Sodom is in some way or another living off the blessings of the computer age, many die of them. The film portrays people whose existence and everyday life is not only formed by modern technology but threatened by it too. This is the place where the curse of digital consumer madness becomes manifest. Sodom is the true end of our modern digitalised world. And it will most probably be the final destination of the tablet, the smart phone, the computer you buy tomorrow. See trailer here

Let There Be Light – Canada – Dir. Mila Aung-Thwin

In the south of France, scientists from 37 countries are building the most complex machine ever attempted: an artificial sun. If they get it right, it will illuminate the way to produce clean, cheap, abundant energy for millions of years. If they fail, it will be one of the biggest scientific failures of all time. Nuclear fusion has been the holy grail of energy for many decades now. It’s the process that drives stars, the ultimate source of energy in the universe. The possibility that fusion might be achievable on Earth as an energy source has driven scientists to the edge of reason for almost a century. See trailer here

Serengeti Rules – USA – Dir. Nicolas Brown

Beginning in the 1960s, a small band of young scientists headed out into the wilderness, driven by an insatiable curiosity about how nature works. Immersed in some of the most remote and spectacular places on Earth—from the majestic Serengeti to the Amazon jungle; from the Arctic Ocean to Pacific tide pools—they discovered a single set of rules that govern all life. Now in the twilight of their eminent careers, these five unsung heroes of modern ecology share the stories of their adventures, reveal how their pioneering work flipped our view of nature on its head, and give us a chance to reimagine the world as it could and should be. See trailer here

The following venues have been confirmed: Rio Cinema in London, Exeter Phoenix in Exeter, Hyde Park Picturehouse in Leeds, Glasgow Film Theatre in Glasgow,  Hawthorne Theatre in Welwyn Garden City, The Poly in Falmouth, Broadway in Nottingham, Eden Court in Inverness, HOME in Manchester, Watershed in Bristol, The Dukes in Lancaster and Showroom in Sheffield.

%d bloggers like this: