Cinecology: Our New Digital Magazine
Plus: Carbon Copy Pitch Competition is back, The City as Commons Workshop #2, Woods Hole Film Festival, & More!
Big news in the Climate Film Festival world: ahead of the festival (which is now just over two months away!), we’re launching Cinecology, a year-round digital magazine that keeps the CFF conversation going long after the credits roll. Think filmmaker interviews, reviews, and essays on climate cinema.
As of today, we’re also opening the call for the second year of Carbon Copy, our pitch competition for climate creators! Plus, don’t miss the second in our summer storytelling workshop series happening next week, or our screening at Woods Hole Film Festival later this month. Read on for details.
In this Newsletter:
🎞️ Cinecology: CFF’s New Digital Magazine
📺 Carbon Copy Pitch Competition
🌇 Global Rise & CFF Workshop @Anew: The City as Commons: Extreme Urban Heat and Stories for a Living Future
🎞️ Woods Hole Film Festival: July 25 - August 1
🌱 Opportunities & Events
🎞️ Cinecology: CFF’s New Digital Magazine
Can’t get enough of CFF? Looking for a deeper understanding of our featured films, CFF filmmakers’ perspectives, and stories from the people reimagining our environmental future?
Meet Cinecology, our new digital magazine.
Cinecology is a year-round companion to the festival and a space for ongoing conversations about climate cinema. The platform will be a hub for all things climate film; we’ll publish interviews with CFF filmmakers, film reviews, essays, and profiles of the communities responding to climate change through innovative moving images. Think of Cinecology as an extension of our festival that continues the conversation beyond the screen.
Cinecology has its own dedicated Substack newsletter. Subscribe today to check out our movie reviews and filmmaker interviews from the 2025 Festival!
📺 Carbon Copy Pitch Competition: Our Open Call is Live!
Carbon Copy: A Climate Creator Pitch Competition calls for original narrative ideas that embed climate themes into rich, character-driven storytelling.
Our narrative pitch competition is back for year two!
Created in partnership between Documentaries Don’t Work and CFF, this initiative reimagines how we talk about the climate crisis—through stories that entertain, resonate, and ignite.
This year, we’re focusing on short-form video. The barriers to distribution have changed, and great stories can now reach millions of people from smartphones, bedrooms, and small creator studios. TL;DR just use your phone!
Up to five finalists will be invited to Climate Week NYC to pitch their work live before a panel of judges at the Climate Film Festival. Each finalist will present their completed video and their vision for expanding it into a larger project.
The winner will receive a $1,000 cash prize and the opportunity to co-produce their project with DDW in the future.
Apply to Carbon Copy! Submissions are open from July 9 through August 21. Submit a completed narrative video up to 5 minutes in length. New and recent work (created after July 2025) is eligible. Any genre is welcome.
Documentaries Don’t Work is a narrative media studio developing climate content built to entertain first. From social-first series to independent film, we create stories that move climate into culture. Our debut digital series Good Work is currently in post-production. The average person can’t name a climate documentary, but everyone can name their favorite show.
🌇 Join our Workshop Series with Global Rise! The City as Commons: Extreme Urban Heat and Stories for a Living Future
CFF and Global Rise: Stories for the Future invite you to the second workshop in our three-part series! Hosted by Anew, The City as Commons series imagines new stories that ignite conversations about climate justice in New York City—this time with a focus on urban heat equity.
Whether you’re a seasoned climate storyteller or starting your creative journey—and whether or not you attended the first City as Commons gathering—we’d love to see you there! RSVP to reserve your spot.
Workshop #2: Extreme Urban Heat and Stories for a Living Future
📆 When: Tuesday, July 14 from 5-8pm
📍 Where: Anew, 526 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014
💡 Thematic Focus: Extreme heat is the deadliest weather-related hazard in the United States, with more Americans dying in heat waves than in hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods combined. Cities face higher temperatures than suburban and rural areas and require specific strategies and infrastructure to address the impacts. The focus of this gathering is urgent, as global warming and the heat crisis are rising faster than public awareness.
📝 Workshop Overview: This gathering will begin with a panel conversation with experts in urban heat. With that foundation, we’ll then turn from science and data to dramatic narrative, moving into a collaborative storytelling workshop to exercise our imaginations to craft stories that illuminate compelling solutions. The gathering will include time to network and connect with fellow writers, filmmakers, and climate-engaged creatives throughout.
Global Rise: Stories for the Future creates innovative strategies for new narratives. We work with creatives and community leaders to examine the interdisciplinary role of science, humanities, and imagination in crafting rich climate stories across media. We believe climate storytelling is most powerful when rooted in the landscapes, communities, systems, and cultures where climate change is lived.
🎞️ 35th Annual Woods Hole Film Festival
The Climate Film Festival is proud to be a partner of the upcoming Woods Hole Film Festival, now celebrating 35 years of bringing great independent film to Cape Cod! Woods Hole will come alive with more than 100 filmmakers coming from around the world to represent a program of 120 narrative features, documentary features, and short films. The festival also offers a dynamic lineup of panel discussions, workshops, live music, special guests, and social events.
This summer’s festival runs from Saturday, July 25 – Saturday, August 1, 2026. Festival passes and ticket packages are available now, and all individual film tickets go on sale starting July 1st. See you at the movies!
CFF @ Woods Hole Film Festival
As part of the festival, CFF is proud to partner with Video Consortium on a screening of the feature documentary Nuisance Bear (2026, dir. Gabriela Osio Vanden, Jack Weisman). The screening will take place on July 30 at 5:15pm in Meigs Room at the Swope Center (Woods Hole). Get your tickets here!
Nuisance Bear Synopsis: For thousands of years, polar bears have migrated along the shores of Hudson Bay in northern Canada. But as climate change delays the seasonal freeze, bears are pushed closer to human settlements, where tourism, surveillance, and wildlife control reshape their existence. Set in Churchill, Manitoba—the self-proclaimed “Polar Bear Capital of the World”—Nuisance Bear follows this uneasy coexistence through the perspective of bears navigating a landscape where they are constantly watched, redirected, and commodified.
🌱 Opportunities & Events
7/13: Pioneer Works, 2027 Visual Arts and Music Residencies Application Deadline
7/14: World Food Forum Youth Film Festival Submission Deadline
8/14: Bloomberg Green Docs Film Competition Application Deadline
Ongoing: Northeast Historic Film, the Chicago Film Archives, & the Lesbian Home Movie Project, The Woman Behind the Camera
Ongoing: Unaffordable America: Photo Pitches for nbcnews.com