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Green Competition

Green Competition is an international competition for outstanding environmental films from all over the world. This year, a total of 970 films from 86 countries (283 features and 687 shorts) have been submitted to the competition, breaking last year’s record 829 films from 64 countries. The majority of the program covers greenhouse effect, quality in agriculture, energy, food, waste, species diversity, and development and ecocide, whereas many films aimed at analyzing the world economic crisis and offering a new alternative. These insightful films suspect the world economic crisis as a product of reckless development and spending under the name of progress and development. Green Competition will serve as a channel to introducing films from around the world that reflect environmental issues and the crisis the human race faces.

FOCUS 2012: Fukushima, Untold Stories

Focus 2012 is a section where GFFIS selects a particular topic and examines the topic with related films to seek alternative solutions.

Films in Focus 2012: Fukushima, Untold Stories are a consolation and statement to the Japanese society devastated by the tsunami and the Fukushima nuclear accident. Notably, Japanese directors, who have built their own cinematic worlds with their films, are now speaking up to the society through their works since the nuclear accident. These films also show an animated record of the directors’ view toward the society, their consolation and their anger. It is trying times where crisis is everywhere. But environmental disasters take eternity to heal and recover, and in influence, it leaves no exception on the face of the earth. That is why it is times for the warmth of solace and solidarity. Focus 2012: Fukushima, Untold Stories is the pledge of GFFIS to the warm hand extended to the survivors.

Climate Change & Future

This section introduces inspiring films directly dealing with the issue of climate change and global warming.

The Island Presidentis the real story of Mohamed Nasheed, who was elected as the president of the Maldives, long after leading a pro-democracy movement against a dictatorship. Chris Paine, who got great attention with Who Killed the Electric Car? in 2006, returns with the sequel, Revenge of The Electric Car. The film carries the voices inside car manufacturers GM, Nissan and Tesla to tell how the electric car rose from being vanished out by the automobile industry and oil industry. Surviving Progress is one of the must-see documentaries. Based on Ronald Wright’s bestseller, A Short History of Progress, this well-made documentary features the world’s great contemporary thinkers and explores the concept of progress in our modern world.

Climate Change & Future Plus – You Are What You Eat

This year’s Climate Change and Future offers an extra. Food is one of major topics of environmental films. GFFIS has always introduced films dealing with food, but this year, we offer a special selection of films featured with sophisticated and high quality. Note that food is tied to this section. We are drawn to organic food products more and more, but the food we consume is crucial to the wellbeing of the earth as much as that of ourselves. With food as the starting point reaching out to the issue of climate change, we offer a diverse delicacy that can bring change to the world.

Green Panorama

Green Panorama features a wide range of environmental films from all around the world.

This year, Green Panorama introduces Happy People: A Year in the Taiga, the story of man and nature portrayed by world-renowned film master, Werner Herzog. It is a yearlong recording of the life of the indigenous people in the Taiga. Many people may remember the motorcycle chase scene in Terminator 2, but not many know that the scene is shot in Los Angeles River. Rock the Boat follows the controversial boating expedition down the cemented-in LA River. What happened on Pam Island is an extraordinary journey of a couple to reach the world’s highest sea cliff with breathtakingly beautiful landscape. Short films for this section, Graffitiger is a witty story of a tiger running through the city of Prague using an attractive combination of 2D animation and live action.

Green Panorama – Eco-Fantastic

This is a special section dedicated to genres such as Sci-Fi, thrillers, and horror films that raise awareness of the environment with their imagination and creativity. Theaters are seeing not only documentaries but also more and more popular films and animations that mention the environmental issues every year. Lys satisfies the viewers with entertainment and its environmental message through a series of fantastic events with a girl who gets the ability to communicate with plants. No Better Place shows climate refugees who land on Germany when they thought they were headed to Denmark, the only nation that takes in climate refugees.

Korean Eco-Panorama

Green Panorama in Korea aims at introducing more Korean environmental films to the audience and giving Korean filmmakers to the much needed encouragement with an opportunity to show their work. Apart from last year’s large number, this year’s selection is small in number. But short animations showed great achievements in quality and message, and was noticed as an important part of the festival. Jeong Jae-Eun’s Talking Architect follows the last journey of the late architect Chung Guyon, and Hoarders depicts the brilliant liveliness of Hwanghak-dong where things are constantly thrown away and rediscovered.

Children of the Earth

This section views the environment through the eyes of children and introduces environmental films for kids and families.

The Great Bear is a gift for children and parents. This animation invites the viewers to a mysterious and fantastic wonderland at the great wild forest in Northern Europe. Studio Holhory has created high quality animations for years, and offers animated folktales that feature cultural characteristics of different countries and filled with wisdom and fun including Old Tales of Asia: Vietnam, The Watermelon and Old Tales of Asia: China, Monster Kite. Gagarin and Me is a story of little Ivan a big fan of the first astronaut Gagarin and his hamster. One of the episodes form a popular Russian animation series Masha and the Bear also has an appealing narrative for children.

Animal, Our Sweet & Wild Companion

Animals, Our Sweet & Wild Companion offers a variety of films seeking to harmonious relationship between animals and human races.

This year, we have a rich selection in Animals, Our Sweet & Wild Companion with a diversity of warm storytelling films. Big Miracle is a true story of a rescue mission for freeing a family of majestic gray whales trapped by ice in the Arctic Circle, which was joined by governments of the U.S and Russia and environmental NGOs. Where the Whales Sing is a story of an economist living with her daughter in Bermuda and their love for humpback whales. Gypaetus Helveticus is a film about bearded vultures that were mistakenly known as extinct. And Pinchaque, the Colombian Tapir tells a story of the discovery of the South American Mountain Ranges.

Best of FIFE

Festival International du Film d’Environnement, hosted by Île-de-France, offered Korea Focus in Feb 2012. In response to the program, GFFIS offers a special selection, called Best of FIFE, with recently released French green films. This section includes Cattle, introduced in the ACID program of 2011 Cannes Film Festival, The Rice Paddy, the first film shot with the language of Dong people of Myanmar (Burma), and King Crab Attack, a SF with groundbreaking imagination.

* Festival International du Film d’Environnement is one of the major film festival addressing themes focusing on the environmental issues hosted by Île-de-France. From 2012, the 29^th film festival moved the main venue to the symbolic place, Au Cinéma des Cinéastes in Paris, to meet more audiences, and screened other 10 cinemas across Paris.