The 2024 CFF Festival Snapshot
10 award winning films, first-look photos, three thousand tickets, and more on the inaugural Climate Film Festival
Hi friends,
What a whirlwind! One week ago we held the final event of the inaugural Climate Film Festival with our friends at Marketplace of the Future, marking forty-one events in a little over a week.
In its first year, CFF is already one of the biggest events at Climate Week NYC:
🎟️ 3,000+ tickets booked by nearly 2,000 attendees
🎬 60 films shown across 26 unique screenings
🎤 8 panels and workshops held on climate storytelling
🎉 7 filmmaker networking events hosted during the weekend
💪 56 sponsors and partners supported the inaugural festival
🦸 100+ volunteers joined forces to put on the festival
Not to mention the countless conversations and connections that took place. We are so thankful to all of our sponsors and partners for making this happen, and we’re inspired by the power of collective action that these collaborations represent.
We cannot wait to see you all at both our year-round events and CFF 2025!
In this newsletter:
The Award Winners
Reflecting on Storytelling in the Wake of Hurricane Helene
Photo Sneak Peak
Stay tuned for a full day-by-day festival recap and more soon!
— Alec, English, and the CFF team
Award Winning Films
The inaugural Climate Film Festival’s awards reception was held on Sunday, Sept. 22 at Index Space, hosted by Seaborne.
Seaborne works with purpose driven companies that want to take meaningful action on contemporary social and environmental issues, guiding them through each step of the way from strategy to storytelling.
The ceremony featured a closing keynote from James Honeyborne of Netflix’s upcoming series Our Oceans.
Winners received a unique, hand-crafted ceramic award by artist Fernanda Uribe-Horta and the opportunity for a second NYC screening at Marketplace of the Future on Saturday, Sept. 28.
Audience Choice: One with the Whale (2023, dir. Jim Wickens, Pete Chelkowski)
Climate Action Award: Valve Turners (2024, dir. Steve Bonds-Liptay)
Documentary Feature: Searching for Amani (2024, dir. Nicole Gormley, Debra Aroko)
Documentary Short: The Last of the Nightingales (2023, dir. Masha Karpoukhina)
Early Career: I Am More Dangerous Dead (2022, dir. Majiye Uchibeke)
Episodic: Climate Artists: sTo Len (2024, ALL ARTS)
Experimental: Data Ghosts (2024, dir. Erica Shires)
Narrative Short: When the Wind Rises (2023, dir. Hung Chen)
Student Choice: One with the Whale (2023, dir. Jim Wickens, Pete Chelkowski)
Sustainable Production, presented by Earth Angel and TheGreenShot: Terra Mater - Motherland (2023, dir. Kantarama Gahigiri)
Thanks to Our Essential Supporters
Reflecting on Storytelling in the Wake of Hurricane Helene
We started CFF because we believe that mass media is essential in creating the new habits, policies, and futures that we need to flourish in a changing climate.
The ongoing devastation of Hurricane Helene has made the climate crisis as clear and urgent as ever. If you’re looking to provide financial support, friends in North Carolina have recommended donating to nonprofit organizations like BeLoved Asheville and Poder Emma.
The climate crisis requires action and urgency, and it also requires courage, community, and stories of what is and could be. Films do not build homes, but they do build culture. Imaginative, innovative, and diverse cinema has the power to reframe engagement with our environment and to develop a shared vision of collective action.
As Asheville native Anna Jane Joyner, founder and chief executive of Good Energy, writes in the LA Times:
What’s happening in North Carolina doesn’t feel real. I have no emotional framework for this, no story to help me. Right now, what I desperately need are authentic stories that help us figure out how to be human in this changing world, to face this overwhelming crisis with bravery. Stories that help us navigate our very understandable fear, anxiety, grief, despair, uncertainty and anger in a way that allows us to feel seen. Stories that make us laugh — not in ignoring our reality, but in the midst of it — and stories that remind us there’s still so much beauty here to fight for. That capture how, in the living nightmare of climate disasters, people demonstrate extraordinary kindness and creativity, as they’re doing in Asheville and Black Mountain at this very moment. And we need stories that expose the guilt of the fossil fuel industry.
Festivals are celebratory by nature, and we have been in awe of the talent, drive, and imagination of everyone who came together to make CFF a reality. But events like these can also be places for reflection, grief, debate, hope, and action. We honor filmmakers today while also reflecting on the deeply challenging tasks ahead, acknowledging that culture change, coalition building, and frontline support are all required in the face of the ongoing global climate crisis.
Photo Sneak Peak
A snapshot of photos from the inaugural Climate Film Festival, with a huge thanks to our photographers Joe Kurle, Julie Thompson, Entertainment + Culture Pavilion, Tara Raftovich, and Livia Sarnelli.
