🌧️ Rainy Day Plans? Join Our Free Carbon Copy Workshop Tonight.

Don't miss our first 2026 Carbon Copy Workshop! Plus, sign up for our new digital magazine, Cinecology, CFF alumni news, and more.

Marisa Guerrero, Alec Turnbull, and J. English Cook

Jul 21, 2026

Rainy days have a way of slowing us down, and reminding us of the changing climate all around us. If today’s weather has you thinking about the stories we tell about our world, join us tonight from 7–8 PM ET for a free virtual workshop on climate storytelling.

Whether you’re a filmmaker, writer, creator, or simply have an idea worth sharing, we’ll explore how to transform a climate issue into a story that audiences want to watch, remember, and pass along.

Read on to RSVP for tonight’s workshop, submit your pitch to Carbon Copy: A Climate Creator Pitch Competition, and catch the latest from the Climate Film Festival community.

In this Newsletter:

📺 TONIGHT! Free virtual workshop from 7-8PM ET with Carbon Copy: A Creative Pitch Competition
🎞️ Subscribe to Cinecology, CFF’s New Digital Magazine
🎓 New workshop with the team behind Hollow Tree (CFF ‘24)
🌱 Opportunities & Events

📺 Reminder - TONIGHT! Join our first ‘26 Carbon Copy virtual workshop, and submit your Narrative Pitch to Carbon Copy.

Audiences decide in seconds what to click, keep watching, and share. Tonight’s workshop from 7-8PM EST is about competing for that attention, turning a climate idea into a story with character, conflict, stakes, and a point of view.

Open to creators at any level, from first-time content makers to experienced filmmakers exploring short-form, creator-first work.

Participants will learn:

Why storytelling outperforms information
How audiences, algorithms, and attention shape what succeeds online
What drives clicks, watch time, and shares
What makes a strong climate story
How to structure a 3-minute narrative
How to choose the right format or genre for an idea
Lessons from successful creator-led content and narrative shorts, in climate and beyond

Takeaway: a clearer story concept and a sharper sense of how to structure a short-form climate narrative.

And don’t forget — Carbon Copy: A Climate Creator Pitch Competition is back and better than ever for its second year!

Submit your pitch today! 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.

Submissions of any genre are open until August 21. Click below to learn more and apply!

Learn More & Apply to Carbon Copy

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.

🎞️ Subscribe to Cinecology: CFF’s New Digital Magazine

Last week, we launched our new digital magazine! Cinecology is a year-round companion to the festival and a space for ongoing conversations about climate cinema. We’ll publish interviews with CFF filmmakers, film reviews, essays, and profiles of the communities responding to climate change through innovative moving images.

Subscribe to Cinecology’s dedicated Substack newsletter for a first look at movie reviews and filmmaker interviews from the 2025 Festival!

Extra, extra — CFF alumni news! The Hollow Tree Creative Writing Workshop is now available for classroom and community use. Developed with the Columbia Climate School and the Climate Museum, this workshop is designed for high school, undergraduate, and adult learners, who have viewed the documentary Hollow Tree, an official Climate Film Festival 2024 selection (available via the Hollow Tree website).

Hollow Tree (dir. Kira Akerman, trailer) follows three young women coming of age in their disappearing homeland of Louisiana, learning about the ways in the Mississippi River shapes their lives. This workshop allows viewers to reflect on their own homeplaces, and invites them to practice intergenerational thinking — thinking across the past, present, and future — with writing prompts, a mapping activity, a playlist, and companion reading lists. All materials are open access. The workshop may be incorporated into classes related to the public humanities, landscape architecture, environmental storytelling, documentary filmmaking, Indigenous studies, climate education, and more. Workshops have previously been facilitated at the Columbia Climate School, the Climate Museum, Harvard University, the Museum of the Moving Image, the Climate Film Festival, Louisiana State University, the Small Center at Tulane University, as well as other educational institutions, community centers, and non-profit spaces.

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