The 31st annual Environmental Film Festival returns to the nation’s capital from March 16 to March 26.
This year marks the festival’s first event back in person since 2019 as it emerges from pandemic restrictions.
“I’m incredibly excited that we’re back in theaters,” Founder Brad Forder told WTOP. “We’re going to showcase over 100 films in person and have over 100 different filmmakers and special guests. We’ll host these programs at 20 different venues. … Smithsonian museums, government buildings like Department of the Interior, embassies, universities like American and Georgetown, and commercial theaters like E Street Cinema and AFI Silver.”
The lineup kicks off with Matthieu Rytz’s “Deep Rising,” narrated by Jason Momoa (“Aquaman”). The film explores a deep ocean threat as a secret organization plans to extract seabed metals to address the world’s energy crisis.
“I love documentaries and narrative films when they take me somewhere I haven’t been — and sometimes somewhere I’m not going to go,” Forder said. “In this case, it takes us to the deepest fathoms of the sea floor. Matthieu does a great job of reflecting these captivating images of what it’s like down there, the beauty of sea life. It also emphasizes this mystery. There’s so much that’s unexplored that we don’t know about yet down there.”
You can also see see the Oscar-nominated documentary “All That Breathes,” co-produced by Tangled Bank Studios in Chevy Chase, Maryland. The film follows two brothers in Delhi, India, who find and heal injured kite birds.
“This is a film that you definitely need to see in the theater [instead of streaming on HBO Max],” Forder said. “It is gorgeous on the big screen, it’s just amazing observational filmmaking, but it’s also this heartwarming story of these brothers in New Delhi, India, that are running a clinic that rehabilitates wild birds. We’re so thrilled that the two brothers, Nadeem and Mohammed, will be joining us for a conversation after the film.”
Don’t miss the inspirational and surprisingly tearjerking “Good Night Oppy,” which was recently named Best Documentary by the Washington Area Film Critics Association. Directed by Ryan White and narrated by Angela Bassett, the film follows Opportunity, the Mars Exploration Rover affectionately dubbed Oppy by NASA.
“It was sent to Mars for a 90-day mission, so three months, but it ended up surviving for 15 years!” Forder said. “It uses interviews from the NASA team, then this animated interpretation of the rover’s journey. You fall in love with this cute robot that almost reminds you of the Pixar film ‘WALL-E.'”
If “Good Night Oppy” is the crowd pleaser, “Geographies of Solitude” is the artful gem, having won the festival’s Award for Artistry. Directed by Jacquelyn Mills, the film chronicles the life of environmentalist Zoe Lucas, who has lived over 40 years on Sable Island, a remote strip of sand off the Canadian coast near Halifax, Nova Scotia.
“It was shot on 16 millimeter, a feature-length experimental documentary but very accessible as well,” Forder said. “It really does flip the script on a typical biopic. It’s one of the most unique, creative films in the lineup — and we’re so thrilled to partner with our friends at the National Museum of Natural History. They have an amazing theater.”
It all culminates with the closing night film “To the End.” Directed by Rachel Lears (“Knock Down the House”), the documentary follows four young women, including Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who are fighting for a Green New Deal to dramatically change U.S. policies to combat the growing threat of climate change.
“AOC is featured in this new film, along with three other extremely inspiring women, all with the same goal, basically pushing for sweeping climate legislation on Capitol Hill — not an easy task,” Forder said. “This is amazing fly-on-the-wall filmmaking where you really get a sense of what’s going on behind the scenes.”
Listen to our full conversation here.
