Showcase of the best FILMS in the world today.
Audience Award Winners:
Best Feature Film: FOR TOMORROW
Best Nature Film: BEAR VIEWING
Best Climate Film: FIELDS OF DEVOTION
Best Sound & Music: UNDER WATER
Best Short Form Doc Short: LAND BEFORE LAND
Best Long Form Doc Shorts: A SMALLHOLDER’S VOICE
Best Experimental: BIOPIXELS
Best Cinematography: SALT DESERT
Best Direction: MOTUS AVIUM
Best Animal Film: MANATEE RESCUE THE LAST STAND
Best Environmental: CONSERVING CARTER’S CREEK
Watch the Audience Feedback Video for each film:
FOR TOMORROW, 72min., USA, Documentary
Directed by An Tran
Narrated by Daisy Ridley
Filmed with local crews around the world from the Andes to Sierra Leone, and with rare access to the United Nations Development Programme, For Tomorrow (narrated by Daisy Ridley) is the story of grassroots innovators dedicated to fighting some of today’s most pressing sustainability issues.
WATCH HERE – The audience feedback video of the film!
FREE MONEY, 85min., USA, Documentary
Directed by Lauren DeFilippo, Sam Soko
When universal basic income (UBI) comes to the Kenyan village of Kogutu, lives are forever changed. GiveDirectly, one of the fastest growing nonprofits of the 21st century, is sending free money for twelve years as part of the world’s largest UBI experiment. Filmmakers Lauren DeFilippo and Sam Soko juxtapose the story of these young economists, bankrolled by Silicon Valley and convinced that they have found an infallible algorithm to end world poverty, with portraits of local Kenyans whose lives are being dramatically impacted for better and for worse.
WATCH HERE – The audience feedback video of the film!
BEAR VIEWING: KATMAI NATIONAL PARK, ALASKA, 12min., Canada, Documentary
Directed by Karen Lang
Katmai National Park and Preserve spans over 16,000 square kilometers and is an important habitat for salmon and a key feeding ground for bear. It is home to approximately 2000 grizzly or brown bear, which are known to be some of the largest in the world.
WATCH HERE – The audience feedback video of the film!
UNDER WATER, 6min., USA, Documentary
Directed by Ziru Wang
10 years after Hurricane Sandy, how the infrastructure under water will survive, is still a challenge.
WATCH HERE – The audience feedback video of the film!
LAND BEFORE LAND, 10min., USA, Documentary
Directed by Steve Bransford
There were massive transformations of Southern U.S. landscapes in the 19th and 20th centuries in relatively short timeframes. Today those changes are hard to see and are rarely memorialized on the land.
WATCH HERE – The audience feedback video of the film!
BIOPIXELS, 4min., USA, Experimental
Directed by Kristina Dutton
Butterflies and moths comprise 12% of all species known to man (180,000 species!), and their seemingly endless biodiversity is visually translated on their wings through color and pattern variation. Incredibly, we humans share these specific wing shaping genes with butterflies, and actually these major molecular paintbrushes are found in numerous other creatures as well.
WATCH HERE – The audience feedback video of the film!
SALT DESERT, 18min., Uzbekistan, Documentary
Directed by Nikita Makarenko
A photographer comes to the dead Aral Sea in search of perfect landscapes. Instead, he meets an old Karakalpak woman who prepares her grave and tombstone in advance. With her help, he understands how closely connected people and the sea are.
WATCH HERE – The audience feedback video of the film!
Motus Avium: A Mission to Save California’s Last Wetlands, 14min., USA, Documentary
Directed by Rob McAllister
Less than 5% of California’s historical wetlands remain, but there is hope in the world’s most productive agricultural valley.
WATCH HERE – The audience feedback video of the film!
MANATEE RESCUE THE LAST STAND OF A FLORIDA TREASURE, 5min., USA, Documentary
Directed by Shannon Malone-Debenedicts
The manatee is Florida’s state animal, and its likeness is found all over the state–from murals and license plates to tourist shops and attractions. But the manatees’ habitat along the east coast of Florida is dying. Over 95% of the seagrasses in the Indian River Lagoon have died out due to tragic confluence of events: huge amounts of wastewater from a growing suburban and urban population; fertilizer runoff feeding toxic algae and creating deadly blooms; aggressive commercial fishing, and increased use of the waterways for boating and other recreational activities. Fish levels are down. Plant life is at record low amounts. And the manatees are dying.
WATCH HERE – The audience feedback video of the film!
Conserving Carter’s Creek: A Tides Inn Shoreline Restoration, 10min., USA, Documentary
Directed by Connor Griffin
Starting in 2021, the Tides Inn completed an extensive, $3.6 million restoration of its shoreline to reestablish wetlands, attract wildlife and increase habitat for aquatic life. The project included 18,000 square feet of new living shoreline, a new oyster reef, 42 new trees, the preservation of approximately 30 old-growth trees, the addition of 10,600 shoreline plants and 10,900 upland plants and a 1,300 -foot new boardwalk along the water’s edge.
WATCH HERE – The audience feedback video of the film!
A SMALLHOLDER’S VOICE, 20min., Sweden, Documentary
Directed by Clara Wetzel
Amid many economic and social challenges, cocoa and palm oil smallholders in Cameroon have established their farms as a source of income for themselves through entrepreneurship and determination – but today, they face new challenges. Thin (or absent) profit margins, unstable markets, changing consumer demands, conflicts and unpredictable climatic patterns complicate their livelihoods now more than ever. But do they have the necessary resources to adapt to these changes?
WATCH HERE – The audience feedback video of the film!
FIELDS OF DEVOTION, 29min., USA, Documentary
Directed by Dena Katzen Seidel, Micah Seidel
Across America, small family farms are racing against climate change. Unpredictable weather and new diseases are destroying the very crops they depend upon. In New Jersey, when a devastating disease wipes out farmers’ fields, growers turn to scientists for help. Fields of Devotion follows the unique relationship between farmers and scientists as they work together over a decade to develop disease and climate resistant food crops.
Watch the Audience Feedback Video:
https://www.wildsound.ca/videos/fields-of-devotion-review
New York SCIENCE & NATURE FEEDBACK Film Festival 