IWFF47 Calendar

Grasping The Nettle

Nettles sting our bare legs, invade our gardens, and swamp our footpaths. Yet for filmmaker Mairi Eyres, there is something about this plant that captures her imagination. She embarks on a journey to learn more, meeting people who can show her a different side to the nettle. With beautiful imagery and touching characters, this film is a call to examine the way we view nature, and to appreciate the wonders right on our doorstep.

Faces of The Cloud Forest

In the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest of Uganda, growing conflict with people puts the local population of mountain gorillas at risk. In her struggle to protect them, one veterinarian discovers that it is the many similarities between the two communities that threaten to destroy them both.

Jaguar De Cielo

Jaguar Del Cielo follows field tech Felix Tafoya’s journey to better understand and conserve Mexico’s apex predator in the El Cielo Biosphere Reserve. By catching jaguars and fitting them with GPS collars, Felix and his co-workers can track the movement of jaguars and get insights into their mysterious lives. The information collected from the collars is crucial to better understand the species and to mitigate conflicts with humans.

Song of the Prairie: Restoring a Home on the Range for the Attwater’s Prairie Chicken

The coastal prairies of Texas once spanned more than 6 million acres, but today less than one percent of this habitat remains. Such a significant loss has devastated many wildlife populations, including the critically endangered Attwater’s prairie chicken (APC). The good news: after years of protection and conservation efforts, the APC population is higher than it has been in decades.

Under the Wire

Pronghorn make their home in the vast sagebrush sea of the American West, where their survival relies on the ability to roam freely. The rangelands in the North Platte River Valley make ideal habitat for pronghorn, however, the miles of fences used to keep cattle in pastures are often barriers to their movements. This is a story about a community of people working together to improve fence lines, so pronghorn can move freely. It also celebrates the wildlife that call the North Platte River Valley home.

water ashes

How is it possible to find happiness while seeing the world around us falling apart so quickly? A music video about the hope of the “climate change” generation.

Burnt Country

Could Australia’s past help secure its future? 65,000 years in the making, Burnt Country is about fighting fire with fire. Exploring the profound knowledge and wisdom of First Nations, this film is an invitation to connect to country and community.

Warning: Depiction/Discussion of wildfire and natural disasters.

Island Zero

The mayor of an island off the coast of Virginia hopes to have his town saved from rising tides.

Joko & Putra

In an Indonesian village, Joko, a veteran fisherman, is struggling to catch fish. The contamination from local industry and the plastic pollution on the coast have contributed to reduce the fish population. Joko’s son Putra is constantly on his phone. He has decided to study to become a mechanical engineer. This decision puts the family's tradition at risk.

For You

For You' is a heartfelt letter from a father to his two-year-old son, capturing a summer day in the park, a world filled with wonders yet to be discovered and a looming danger. Set in Peckham, South East London, the director narrates the story in Italian, the language he has spoken to his son since birth. This project is deeply intimate and personal, yet carries a universal and resonating message: what lies ahead might be uncertain, but with love, courage, and imagination, we can create a better future.

Wild Hope: Vertical Meadows

As urban expansion quickly replaces natural habitats, façade engineer Alistair Law has created a radical new way to restore native ecosystems for pollinators and create natural spaces for us all within cities—by turning the walls of buildings and construction sites into meadows.

The Quest to Save Parasites

Scientists are on a mission to save parasites, not to kill them. Climate change is already doing an increasingly good job at the latter, and that could be a big problem for the world.

Toxic Art

Acidic mine drainage is a pervasive problem in Appalachia, poisoning streams and killing wildlife. The technology and funding to remove these pollutants and bring life back to streams just didn't exist 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.

Wings of Oder

Growing up near the Oder in Poland, Piotr Chara spent most of his childhood in and around the river. Later, Piotr noticed that climate change had negatively impacted the wildlife of the once-thriving shores. Birds' habitats were compromised, making them easy prey for predators. Piotr researched solutions and started an organization that builds floating nests for the birds. Now, Piotr films the birds as part of his studies, reporting his findings to The Foundation of the Green Valley of the Oder.

Healy

Healy follows a crew of scientists and sailors through a two-month research mission seeking out to understand why the northern ice cap is melting faster than climate models have predicted – and how the transformation is altering life on Earth. We follow the crew of USCGC Healy from the Aleutian Islands through the Bering Strait and into the Beaufort Sea, where shipmates encounter the singular beauty of the frozen Arctic Ocean.

Arctic: Our Frozen Planet

At the top of the globe lies a spectacular frozen realm. But don’t be fooled by appearances...this place is not frozen in time. It’s a dynamic ecosystem and for thousands of years, its indigenous people and wildlife have found ways to survive and live in harmony with these extremes. As the planet’s climate is experiencing rapid changes, so is the Arctic. But the changes here are happening faster and more dramatically than anywhere else. Can it keep pace?

If You Give a Beach a Bottle

Inspired by a picture book, Max Romey heads to a remote beach on Alaska's coastline in search of marine debris. What he finds is a different story altogether.

Washed Ashore

An international team of marine biologists investigates the mysterious and sudden die-off of the Pacific gray whale since 2019. With every passing month, more whales are washing ashore on their migration from Mexico to Alaska. Determined to find a cause, this team of scientists is racing against the clock.

Warning: Depiction/Discussion of dead animals.

Rorqual

In the deep waters of the Mediterranean hides an animal of extraordinary dimensions. The second-largest living creature on the planet found refuge in these waters long ago. It is a pillar of the ecosystem, a symbol of the richness of our world. Come aboard WWF's iconic sailing boat, the Blue Panda, and sail to the Pelagos sanctuary alongside Denis Ody and his teams, where you'll meet the fin whale.

Losing Blue

What does it mean to lose a color? Losing Blue is a cinematic poem about losing the otherworldly blues of ancient mountain lakes, now fading due to climate change. With stunning cinematography, this short documentary immerses the viewer in the magnificence of these rare lakes, pulling us in to witness their power and understand what their loss would mean both for ourselves and for the Earth.

Pripyat Horse

"A sparrow flies swiftly in through one door of the hall, and out through another…. Even so, man appears on earth for a little while; but of what went before this life or of what follows, we know nothing." -- Bede

A moment for mourning, for a friend, for the earth.

Silent chirping of invisible Digits

Like a single film frame, insects flash for the fraction of a second, only to immediately withdraw from the field of vision again. In between their flickering body fragments, the film shows undefinable voids. What can be seen when familiar filters of vision and the narratives associated with them are missing?

WARNING: This film contains flashing lights which may not be suitable for photosensitive epilepsy.

Slow Shift

In Slow Shift, humans, animals, music, and rock are entangled in dialogue. The film is shot in Hampi, India, in the remains of a 14th century city. This city, strewn with ancient ruins and massive boulders, is also said to be the monkey kingdom of ancient lore. Currently, the site is overrun with langurs, a genus of monkeys native to the subcontinent. The film playfully interrogates various intersections between ancient and geological timescales, the real and mythic, the lived and preserved, the human and animal.

The Halcyon Days

The Halcyon Days follows the intimate lives of kingfishers as they struggle to raise a family. The film focuses on the journey of a female kingfisher as she must deal with the death of her chicks and raise another family before the season ends.

Modern Goose

Able to navigate by reading the Earth’s magnetic field, equally at home on land, air, and water, geese straddle the territory between ancient instincts and the contemporary world. Combining beauty, humor, and profound empathy, director Karsten Wall’s exquisitely observed film essay explores the daily life of these iconic animals to convey a deeper message of continuity and connection.