Our Short Films 2026
This year we have arranged multiple short film programmes for you. Over the course of the entire festival, we will show numerous documentary, artistic and animation movies in a short format. The movies all have a unique way to tell stories about people concerned with sustainability, climate change and social injustice.
The Short Film Hour: Saving Ecosystems on Friday afternoon takes its audience to three entirely different habitats. In a delta scarred by war in Ukraine, in the icy waters of northern Norway as well as in the hostile salt plains of the Atacama desert, people are fighting to protect places especially threatened by human incursions and climate change.
During Thursday’s screening of the Team’s Favourites we present a colourful collection of movies from around the world that present environmental topics through various lenses and tell the stories of relentless people fighting for change.
Like in the last years, we conclude our festival with the Jury Selection of short films. Alongside a selection of outstanding movies that were submitted to our festival this years, we will also crown the winner of our yearly short film award during this event on Sunday evening.
The Movies
Balconada
Director: Iva Tokmakchieva
Duration: 11 min
Language: No Dialogue
A hot summer day brings several neighbours out on their balconies.
Screened before the movie “Climate Art”
Stills
Corteza
Director: Simon Acosta
Duration: 14 min
Language: Spanish
Subtitles: English
In rural Colombia—one of the most dangerous countries for environmental leaders—passionate forest ranger Astrid fights to protect the tropical forest and its elusive wildlife, including the rare spectacled bear.
Screened during: to be determined
Stills
Desi Oon
Director: Suresh Eriyat
Duration: 7 min
Language: Hindi
Subtitles: English
The film explores the deep connection between Deccani wool, the land, and its people, highlighting its cultural, spiritual, and ecological significance. It delves into the resilience of the Deccani sheep, the traditions of shepherding, and the sacred role of wool in daily life.
Screened during: to be determined
Stills
Entropy
Director: Inuk Jørgensen
Duration: 10 min
Language: Kalaallisut, English
Subtitles: English
The vast Greenlandic ice sheet has been created over thousands of years but today climate change is threatening the close and sacred connection between the land moulded by ice and the Inuit who live there.
Screened during: to be determined
Hang am Baum
Director: Lucas Dülligen
Duration: 13 min
Language: No Dialogue
An apocalyptic sound of roaring machines incessantly intrudes into the habitats of man and nature. Barren landscapes and deserted villages linger in hypnotic restlessness. A self-destructive system meets resistance.
Screened during: to be determined
Stills
Jus d’orange
Director: Alexandre Athané
Duration: 14 min
Language: French
Subtitles: English
Toni grows oranges. He loves them, they are his treasure. Until one day, strange cargo ships dock in the valley. Cargos loaded with… GREEN oranges.
Screened during: to be determined
Stills
Karatoya
Directors: Rowfel Ahmmed & Sadik Sarowar Sunam
Duration: 9 min
Language: Bengali
Subtitles: English
Flowing through the heart of Bogura, the Karatoya River bears the weight of a long, visible decline. Once one of northern Bengal’s major waterways, the river today appears narrowed, stagnant, and burdened with waste its surface calm, its crisis deeply rooted.
Screened during: to be determined
Land
Director: Martin Cooper
Duration: 10 min
Language: Englisch
As climate change increasingly transfigures our world, two artists living on different continents (Nii Obodai from Ghana, and Nakajima Hiroyukifrom Japan), explain how their creative work reflects what the notion of “LAND” means to them.
Screened in: to be determined
Stills
Life Invisible
Directors: Bettina Perut & Ivan Osnovikoff
Duration: 20 min
Language: Spanish
Subtitles: English
Infections by antibiotic-resistant superbugs cause millions of deaths around the world each year. The hope for salvation lies in the hands of scientists such as Professor Cristina Dorador who explores the hostile salt flats of the Atacama Desert in search of natural antibiotics.
Screened during: Short film hour – Saving Ecosystems
Stills
Mal Deetz bergauf, mal Deetz bergab
Director: Fritz Hahn
Duration: 7 min
Language: German
Subtitles: English
Berlin ends in Deetz, a landfill site in Brandenburg. Here, a mountain of construction waste is growing, marking the downside of urban growth and greed for profit. The film analyses the ecological and social consequences of demolition in Berlin.
Screened during: to be determined
Stills
One Coral at a Time
Director: Gabriele Castellani
Duration: 8 min
Sprache: English, Italian
Subtitles: English
On a small island in the Maldives, a young couple works to restore coral reefs, one fragment at a time. Through their daily work beneath the surface, their efforts reveal both the fragility of marine ecosystems and the quiet hope of regeneration.
Screened during: to be determined
Stills
Paris Fox
Director: Sofian Chouaib
Duration: 4 min
Language: French
Subtitles: English
Swiper is a fox living peacefully in a wild space, surrounded by nature, majestic trees, tall grass… and the city of Paris. Indeed, this fox has settled in an urban wasteland.
Screened during: to be determined
Stills
Pëkëya
Director: Remi Bumstead
Duration: 14 min
Language: Spanish
Subtitles: English
The Siekopai Nation ancestrally lived between the Putamayo and the Napo Rivers in the Amazon basin. This film follows their journey to reconnect back with their ancestral land where they collect the seeds of fruits to reforest their current territory.
Screened during: to be determined
Stills
Schulweg
Director: Lena Tondello
Duration: 8 min
Language: German
Subtitles: English
In July of 2021 there was a flood of catastrophic scope in the Ahrtal Region of Germany. 135 people lost their lives and countless others lost their possessions, their homes, their most treasured mementos. Three years later the reconstruction is progressing slowly.
Screened before the movie “Fire, Water, Earth, Air”
Stills
Stone Biter: Saving the Arctic Sea Forest
Director: Ismaele Tortella
Duration: 20 min
Language: English
Subtitles: English
When an Italian photographer moves to Northern Norway, he carries a dream: to explore the icy Arctic waters and film the iconic wolffish amongst lush kelp forests. But beneath the surface, he finds a stark reality – an ocean floor stripped bare, where the once-thriving sea forests have nearly vanished.
Screened during: Short Film Hour – Saving Ecosystems
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The Danube Delta and the Healing Power of Nature
Director: Emmanuel Rondeau
Duration: 17 min
Languages: English, Russian, Ukrainian
Subtitles: English
What if preserving wild nature could help heal the bodies, dreams, and landscapes of a country scarred by years of war? In the heart of Ukraine and the Danube Delta, this is what the team behind ‘Rewilding Ukraine’ believes — betting on life itself to build the country of tomorrow.
Screened during: Short Film Hour – Saving Ecosystems
Stills
The Dreaming World
Director: Alexi Scheiber
Duration: 4 min
Language: English
Subtitles: English
The dreaming world emerges in a series of vignettes in the form of animation painting over live-action spaces. Spaces are de-paved and re-wilded. Cars are removed and formerly quiet suburban spaces become bustling with life.
Screened during: to be determined
Stills
Ziki
Directors: Roberta Palmieri & Olga Sargenti
Duration: 13 min
Language: Kein Dialog
Ziki is a Congolese boy living in a village with his mother. One day, while the two are playing, Ziki discovers a mysterious tunnel winding beneath the kitchen floor.
Screened during: to be determined
Stills
