The first edition of the Goa Environmental Film Festival is scheduled to take place on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Goa. The festival coincides with World Environment Day. The ‘elephant whisperer‘, the film that recently won the award Oscar Award for Best Short Documentary, will be the festival’s opening film. The first edition of this film festival is based on themes such as environment, sustainable living, community life, biodiversity, plastic pollution solutions, water conservation and more, which is in line with the G20 theme “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” – “One Earth, One Family, One Future. Over 50 films from around the world will be screened during the three day event at the Maquinez Palace.
From June 3rd to 5th it will be a three-day festival. The festival will open on Saturday (3 June) at 10.30am. “The G20 meetings in Goa are based on and organized around the theme of sustainability. At this film festival we also have Goa Connect, we will be presenting Goan films and Goan filmmakers.” Films will be shown. The opening and closing films have won awards and it is a wonderful opportunity to learn more about environmental issues facing the world through films,” said Nilesh Cabral, Minister of Public Works and Legislative Affairs, Goa.
“The festival aims to connect the local people of Goa to global environmental issues and solutions. We invited films from G20 countries and received many submissions from their embassies. Films from Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Finland, Ireland, Oman, Portugal, Russia.” and Spain are present through films that are shown here. We have 50 films in total and we urge everyone who cares about the environment, especially students, to register for the festival,” said Sanjit Rodrigues, Nodal Officer (G20).
The Goa Environmental Film Festival has decided to honor the nightingale or the bulbul, the state bird of Goa by using it in its logo. The nightingale or bulbul is a symbol of beauty, harmony and resilience, qualities essential to protecting the environment. This is touted as a unique opportunity to explore films that reveal our planet’s interdependence; The films address pressing issues such as climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, marine pollution and sustainable living to inspire awareness and action.
Several film directors will take part in the festival. Shridhar Sudhir, who directed Moving Upstream Ganga, Janantik Shukla, who received awards for Mulsotan – The Rooted, Shishir Jha, who directed Tortoise Under The Earth, the mining feature film based on various Festivals has traveled the world, Sohil Vaidya, director of the award-winning film Murmurs of the Jungle, will be present at the festival.
An award-winning Kashmiri filmmaker Jalal Ud Din Baba, the director of Dhivarah: A Way Of Life, Giridhar Nayak, Dheeraj Aithal and Pradeep Hegde and other filmmakers will also be present at the festival. Films from different countries such as Ireland, Canada and Finland (Tale of Sleeping Giants), Spain, Bulgaria, Russia, Republic of Croatia and Portugal will be shown as well as a number of environmental films from Oman.
The festival features a wide range of award-winning films, from acclaimed directors to emerging talent, as we shift perceptions and inspire action through powerful environmental storytelling. Films like “The Burning Fields” about the world’s largest e-waste dump, “Plastic Bag Store”, a series of stories, or “Manta Ray” about illegal fishing shed light on global environmental problems. The festival ends on World Environment Daywhich takes place on June 5th with the screening of the Spanish film Alcarras, which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and was Spain’s entry for the Oscars earlier in the year.
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