From 6 to 10 November 2024, the Greenmotions Film Festival once again took place at the Kommunales Kino im Alten Wiehrebahnhof in Freiburg. We showed inspiring films on various topics related to the environment and sustainability. In addition to many films, there was a motivating workshop, a delicious food sharing buffet and exciting live discussions and video talks with filmmakers and experts. A total of 20 screenings were followed by discussions lasting 30 to 60 minutes after 13 of them. We welcomed a total of 1093 visitors over the five days of the festival. We would like to thank all volunteers, co-operation partners, sponsors and everyone who helped to make this wonderful festival possible!

With this year’s edition of the festival, we focussed on the special topic ‘United in Change? Striving for Just Transition‘. The films in the special topic came from all over the world and dealt with a variety of topics. In particular, there was much discussion about how the necessary ecological transformation can be organised in such a way that as few people as possible feel economically, culturally or politically left behind. The films that were shown were: ‘Tax Wars’ by Hege Dehli and Xavier Herel, ‘You will feed the world’ by Nathan Pirard and Floris Schruijer, ‘Auf der Kippe’ by Britt Beyer, ‘Cobalt Rush’ by Quentin Noirfalisse and Arnaud Zajtman, ‘Offshore’ by Hazel Falck, ‘Hearing no Objection’ by Emily Boyle and ‘King Coal’ by Elaine McMillion Sheldon.

A particular highlight was the panel discussion following the film ‘Auf der Kippe’. The guests were Torsten Pötzsch, former mayor of Weißwasser in Lusatia, Lina Wiemer-Cialowicz, parliamentary group leader of Eine Stadt für alle in Freiburg’s local council, and Jannis Niethammer, a member of ICLEI’s European Secretariat in Freiburg. The guests spoke about the question of how a just transition can be organised in cities. Other films were also accompanied by exciting specialist input from various experts: representatives of German-Africa Insight as part of Cobalt Rush and Greta Waltenberg, activist from Freiburg at ‘Hearing no Objection’. We would like to thank our experts for their participation, which enriched our program!

Prior to the festival, a jury consisting of Claudia Carolin Münch (documentary filmmaker), Alexa Weik von Mossner (project manager at Visions of Sustainability) and Rich Felgate (director of last year’s winning film Finite) had already decided to award this year’s prize for the best film in the special topic category to the film ‘Cobalt Rush’.

The workshop on Saturday morning also focussed on one aspect of the special topic: the participants held exciting discussions on the possibilities of a fair and ecological transformation in agriculture.

The audience chose their favourite from all the feature-length films that were not assigned to the special theme. Eight films competed for the Audience Award. Our opening film ‘The Pickers’ kicked things off on Wednesday evening, addressing the catastrophic working conditions on fruit and vegetable plantations in southern Europe, where migrants in particular are employed. After the film, the film’s director Elke Sasse was available for an exciting Q&A session.

On Thursday, the two films ‘Im Land der Wölfe’ by Ralf Bücheler and ‘Searching for Nika’ by Stanislav Kapralov were shown as part of the Audience Award. ‘Im Land der Wölfe’ documents the return of wolves to Germany and the social reactions triggered by this. Afterwards, Dr Micha Herdtfelder, Head of the Lynx & Wolf Department at the Forstliche Versuchsanstalt (FVA) in Freiburg, was available to answer questions. Among other things, he reported on various herd protection strategies that are currently being trialled in the Black Forest. ‘Searching for Nika’ shows the courageous work of volunteers who rescue wild, domestic and zoo animals from war zones in Ukraine at great personal risk.

On Friday, we showed the film ‘State of Necessity’ about the legal dispute surrounding the protest actions of a group of climate activists in Switzerland, followed by an online discussion with Stéphane Goël. The film ‘Where we used to sleep’, which portrays Valéria, whose village in Romania is flooded by toxic wastewater from a copper mine and who is therefore forced to relocate, was met with particular interest. Director Matthäus Wörle was also available for a discussion after the film.

On Saturday, ‘A call from the wild’ by Asgeir Helgestad, a breathtaking nature documentary about flora and fauna in Norway, ‘Bahnhof der Schmetterlinge’ by Martin Schilt and Daniel Ballmer, a documentary about post-use conflicts surrounding an old marshalling yard in Basel, and ‘We are Guardians’ by Edivan Guajajara, Chelsea Greene and Robert Grobman about the struggle of indigenous groups against the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest were three more exciting films shown in the Public Award category. ‘Bahnhof der Schmetterlinge’ was followed by a lively discussion with Martin Schilt and Thomas Grossenbacher (President of Pro Natura Basel), which focussed on the opportunities for biodiversity offered by open spaces in urban areas.

With ‘Where we used to sleep’ and ‘We are guardians’, the two films that attracted the most guests to the cinema in this category were chosen as the winners. We congratulate the winners on their success!

Saturday kicked off with a programme especially for our younger guests: Following the great interest in 2023, we put together a programme of short films on various environmental topics for the second time. The prize for the best short film was awarded by the young guests themselves – as with the Public Award. Based on the ratings, the film ‘Tümpel’ by Lena von Döhren and Eva Rust was chosen as the winner.

As every year, the international short film competition with subsequent award ceremony was once again a highlight of our varied programme. The short film jury consisting of Noah Erni (director of last year’s winning film ‘The Invention of Less’), Bernward Janzig (freelance journalist) and Sigrid Faltin (filmmaker) led through the evening and honoured ‘The man who mends things’, a stop-motion animation by Ann Farley, as the best short film.

This year’s festival also marked the tenth anniversary of Greenmotions. We put together a very special programme for this: It kicked off with a performance by live cinema artist Die! Goldstein on Friday evening. Die! Goldstein was already part of the festival programme in 2019 and his impressive performance helped to make our programme even more varied and impressive this year. We also celebrated our anniversary on Saturday evening at an after-party with wine from Weingut Andreas Dilger and music from the band LaTocata and friends. With PUSH, Beyond the Redlines and SEED, we also included a number of documentaries from recent years in the programme that are still very relevant today, especially for Freiburg, with the topics of housing shortages, activism and agriculture. As part of PUSH, Helma Haselberger from ‘Wem gehört die Stadt’ was available for an exciting exchange on the housing shortage in Freiburg and possible solutions. We also screened the winning films from the short film competitions of recent years in a highlight session. We also took the anniversary as an opportunity to reflect on the role that the medium of film can and should play in (climate) activism in a panel discussion together with the AG Dokumentationsfilm Südbaden.