The submission period for the Greenmotions Filmfestival 2026 has officially begun. Participation is open to all. The festival welcomes films produced using any technique, including animation, documentary, drama, experimental or artistic films, and hybrid work, regardless of budget size.
We are looking for films for our four different categories:
– Short film – Kids & young audience short film – Feature film – Special Topic 2026 “RECOGNITION: Shining a Light on the Invisible”
The first three categories focus on the general environmental and sustainability themes.
With this yearâs Special Topic, âRecognition: Shining a Light on the Invisibleâ, the Greenmotions Filmfestival focuses on people and realities that often remain unseen – even though they sustain our societies and our shared wellbeing.
From unpaid care workers to marginalized communities, we highlight stories of struggle, resilience, and dignity. We explore who is recognized, who is overlooked, and why – and how systems of power and inequality contribute to invisibility. By giving space to unheard voices, we aim to foster empathy, critical reflection, and solidarity – and to inspire action toward a more just, inclusive, and sustainable world. A more detailed description of our special topic can be found here.
You can submit your movie via Filmfreeway. The submission period is open until April 16. 2026. You can check out our terms and conditionshere. We are looking forward of all the exciting and wonderful submissions for this year’s festival.
We are thrilled to share the special topic for this year’s festival. As usual, there will be a specific prize category for movies as well as a workshop on the topic at this year’s festival.
The Greenmotions Filmfestival presents films that open new perspectives, inspire change, and make visible pathways toward a sustainable future. With this yearâs Special Topic, âRecognition: Shining a Light on the Invisibleâ, we focus on people and realities that often remain unseen – even though they decisively shape our social coexistence and collective wellbeing. At the heart of this focus lies the question of recognition: Who is seen, heard and valued in our societies – and who is not?
One central group we address are those whose work is insufficiently recognized: people engaged in care and support work, much of it unpaid or poorly paid. This includes raising children, caring for elderly relatives, supporting people with disabilities as well as working in hospitals, nursing homes and social services. Care work is physically demanding and emotionally intensive. It sustains families, communities, and entire societies – yet it is too often taken for granted.
In Germany alone, adults perform more than 117 billion hours of unpaid care work every year, with women contributing around 72 billion of those hours. This exceeds the total number of paid working hours nationwide. Nevertheless, it is frequently dismissed as ânon-productiveâ. Because care work is so physically and emotionally exhausting and highly time-consuming, many caregivers lack the time, energy, and resources to participate in political and social life. As a result, they are often unable to organize and advocate for better working conditions and recognition.
These inequalities are further intensified through intersecting forms of discrimination. Women continue to carry the main burden of care work, reflecting deeply rooted gender norms and unequal power relations. Migrant women, in particular, are disproportionately represented in precarious and informal care jobs. At the same time, care systems are increasingly shaped by economic efficiency and profit-oriented models. Institutions are expected to function like businesses, prioritizing cost reduction over human needs – and the growing pressure is borne by those who provide care, often at the expense of their health, dignity, and financial security.
Beyond care workers, this Special Topic also embraces other groups whose contributions to society tend to get overlooked. Groups like indigenous people, migrants, refugees, stateless people, sex workers, undocumented workers, people affected by addiction, homeless people and queer communities are historically pushed to be outsiders in society. Their value to society, culture and knowledge often gets ignored â in some cases wilfully remains unrecognised. Since their specific circumstances remain unaccounted for by many policies and jurisdictions, these groups rely heavily on support structures operating separately from state institutions and are cut off from many state-regulated social services. To the unaffected, the challenges faced by members of these groups as well as their role in societal structures largely remains invisible.
With this Special topic, we want to tell the stories of people, whose actions and needs are not recognised by parts of society. We seek stories that reveal the struggles, resilience and dignity of the systematically marginalised. In a time of political division and rising extremism, we furthermore strive to give a face and a voice to those who increasingly face dehumanisation and are wrongly deemed worthless by political movements around the world.
At the same time, we reflect on the structural dimensions of invisibility. Who benefits from systems that rely on unrecognized labour and marginalized lives? How do capitalism, political interests, and deeply rooted social norms contribute to exploitation and exclusion? And how do formal and informal networks of mutual support create spaces of resistance, care, and solidarity?
Recognition is not only about visibility – it is about respect, rights and responsibility. By “Shining a Light on the Invisible”, we aim to illustrate that a society is built around people and that it should take all its members into account. We hope to foster empathy, critical reflection, and collective action – and to strengthen movements toward a more just, inclusive, and sustainable future.
As in (almost) every year since 2014, the Greenmotions Filmfestival once again opened its doors to cinema and sustainability enthusiasts at Kommunales Kino at Alter Wiehrebahnhof from November 5th to 9th, 2025. This year, we have once again chosen a special topic to which we devoted particular attention in part of our program: âClosing the loop: living within Planetary Boundariesâ addresses the question of how wasteful, linear lifestyles and economic practices can be overcome and replaced by circular lifestyles that enable a good life for everyone on a planet with finite resources.
With over 900 visitors over five days, numerous sold-out events, and a diverse film program, the festival was a resounding success. Thank you all for coming out in such large numbers, and thank you to all our sponsors and partners who made the festival possible. In this blog post, we would like to look back with you on the highlights of the last few days:
(Still from “wer wenn nicht du” winner of the audience award by Rosa-Lena Lange and Charlotte Weinreich)
Wednesday, November 5
Right from the first day, there was a lot going on at Kommunales Kino: over 70 people came to watch the film âwer wenn nicht duâ (who if not you) by Charlotte Weinreich and Rosa-Lena Lange, as well as the short film âDARIO – How to (not) change the worldâ by Christian Belz, which deals with the question of what kind of activism is legitimate and promising in times of the escalating climate crisis. The film was followed by an exciting discussion with Charlotte and Christian, as well as Jannis Niethammer and Karl Braig, the two protagonists from âwer wenn nicht du.â This film was so well received by the audience that it was immediately voted the winner of the audience award at the end of the festival. Congratulations!
Thursday, November 6
The second day of the festival began with Dominic Allen’s film âPlanet Wind: The global story of Offshore Windâ. Despite the early hour, nearly 50 guests were in the cinema auditorium, following the film on its journey to offshore wind farms around the globe. After the film, there was an exciting Q&A session with Nelly Kirsch from the City of Freiburg’s Environmental Protection Agency on the expansion of renewable energies in general and wind energy in particular in Freiburg and the surrounding area.
With almost 170 guests, the festival really got going on the third day. The day opened with the film âLost for Wordsâ, a meditative collage by Hannah Papacek-Harper about our connection to nature and what the loss of wilderness means for us humans.
The evening concluded with the film âThe Battle for Laikipiaâ by Daphne Matziaraki and Peter Murimi. The questions raised in the film (How does colonial heritage still determine land ownership in parts of Africa today? What potential for conflict does this hold, and how is it further exacerbated by the climate crisis?) were explored in greater depth after the film in a Q&A session with Edwin Mutyenyoka from the Arnold-Bergstraesser-Institute.
Saturday, November 8
The fourth day of the festival began much earlier than the previous ones, as it was the weekend, with an interactive program item: In a three-hour workshop, Andreas Doerne from Holistic Compost Lab, who had already enriched the panel discussion on Thursday with his expertise, introduced the 15 participants to the fine art of composting.
At the same time, the first round of our yearly kids’ program took place in the cinema: Anne and Laura from the organising team guided over 30 children aged five and above and their accompanying adults through a colorful program of short films on the topics of environmental protection and sustainability.
On Saturday afternoon, two more films on the special topic were on the program: âPeople at the Heart of Changeâ by Karen Logan and âBen & bEartha: A Community’s Compost Love Storyâ by Jordan Osmond show inspiring grassroots composting projects from South Africa and New Zealand, respectively. After the film, Veit Cornelis from the Freiburger Abfallwirtschaft ASF answered visitors’ questions about the waste system in Freiburg and the measures being taken to establish stronger material cycles in this area.
The journey around the globe continued cheerfully in the afternoon: Curmiah Lisette’s film âRoots of Resilience: Stories of Caribbean Women in Agricultureâ presents an organization on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia that is committed to empowering women in local agriculture. âBirdsongâ by Kathleen Harris follows an Irish ornithologist as he attempts to record the voices of all bird species in Ireland. âLi Chamâ by Ana Ts’uyeb movingly depicts the emancipation of three Tsotsil women who regain their belief in a life of freedom and independence through the philosophy of Zapatismo.
The grand finale on Saturday evening was the film âThe Wolves Always Come at Nightâ by Gabrielle Brady about a nomadic family in Mongolia who are forced to give up their traditional pastoral lifestyle due to climate change and make a new start in the big city. After the film, the more than 80 visitors were able to ask questions to the film’s editor, Katharina Fiedler, who joined us through a video call.
On Sunday afternoon, Pierre-François Didek’s film âDocumerica, Self-Portrait of a Nation on the Brinkâ painted a moving but also disturbing picture of the long history of environmental destruction in the USA. The shocking extent of human environmental destruction was also evident in the film âBottlemenâ by Nemanja VojinoviÄ, which documents the lives of bottle collectors at Europe’s largest landfill site in Serbia.
The kids’ program also ran for the second time on Sunday afternoon. The majority of young visitors to the two sessions on Saturday and Sunday voted Eva MatejoviÄova’s film âWriting Home,â about the life of a bark beetle girl, as the winner of the Sparkasse Freiburg – Nördlicher Breisgau Kids’ Award. Congratulations!
The last feature film of the 2025 festival was once again related to our special topic: Martin H. Oetting’s film âPurposeâ follows two economists in their fight for a fundamentally new economic system beyond the pressure to grow and the throwaway mentality. The film was followed by a panel discussion with the director (online), Niklas Mischowski from the ICLEI city alliance, and Benedikt Schmid from the University of Freiburg.
To bring the festival to a close together, the Greenmotions organizing team invited everyone to an afterparty in the gallery of Kommunales Kino after the award ceremony, with music from the Freiburg band Cosmic Mints and sparkling wine and wine sponsored by Weingut Andreas Dilger.
With the introduction of our solidary pricing system comes another surprise: The Greenmotions Festival Pass. With your Festival Pass, you can watch as many movies as you want during the festival. To get a your pass, just choose the option “Festival Pass regular” at checkout when purchasing a ticket. The pass costs 20.00⏠and can be bought online or at the cinema’s box office. At the first screening you visit, you will get your physical pass, that you can then bring to the other screenings. For all further screenings, you can show up spontaneously or reserve a seat beforehand via telephone, at the cinema counter.
And don’t worry, if you have already bought tickets, you can still get a festival pass. In that case, we will subtract the price of the tickets you’ve already bought from the festival pass cost. We are excited to finally see you at the KoKi next week â some of you, hopefully, more than once.
As many of you probably know, we have organised the festival on a donation basis so far, to enable everyone to attend regardless of their financial means. Unfortunately, donations have steadily declined in recent years â in 2024, the average donation was only âŹ4 per visitor. At the same time, it was particularly difficult to obtain funding this year, probably due to the overall tense economic situation. We have therefore decided to sell regular tickets for the festival for the first time this year in order to cover our rising costs. We are introducing a three-tier pricing system, where everyone can decide for themselves how much they can and want to spend on their ticket. If you prefer paying in cash, you can reserve tickets via phone at the KoKi or buy them at the box office.
We want you! Once again this year, we need lots of helping hands during the festival from 5 to 9 November to assist us at the box office, at the entrance and behind the scenes with evaluating the film ratings. In return, you can expect a great team spirit in a group with other volunteers, free snacks and free admission to the films during your shift (subject to availability and if tasks allow it). Have we sparked your interest? Then follow this link and leave us your contact details so that we can get in touch with you. We look forward to hearing from you! No German skills needed đ
At this years Agrikulturfestival in Freiburg, we showed two movies from last year’s selection. Despite the excellent weather, more than 40 people watched the movies “The Pickers” by Elke Sasse und “Im Land der Wölfe” by Ralf BĂŒcheler with us. Ăber 40 interessierte GĂ€ste haben, trotz prĂ€chtigem Wetter, den Weg in unseren dunklen Kinosaal gefunden. Toll, dass ihr da wart!
We hope to see many of you again in November at our festival. Currently, we are putting on the last touches to our programme and hope to be able to present it to you very soon. Wir hoffen, möglichst viele von euch im November beim Festival wiederzusehen. Gerade befinden wir uns in den letzten ZĂŒgen der Programmplanung, sodass wir euch schon bald unsere Filme und weiteren spannenden Programmpunkte prĂ€sentieren können. Wir freuen uns schon riesig auf das Festival â und vor allem auf euch.
The submission period for this year’s festival has ended. We are happy to have received over 250 movies in our various categories. Now, we are working hard to review all the great films we have received and selecting the programme for the festival. Already we are looking forward to showing inspiring, educational and moving films at our festival in November. A huge Thank You to all of the film makers and distributors that have sent us their movies to review this year!
If you are a film maker or distributor and have not had the chance to submit you film in time, you can always hand in your movie during next year’s submission period, which starts on the 15th of February 2026. More infos on our categories and the terms and conditions can be found on our page for filmmakers.
(Picture from “We Are Guardians” co-winner of the audience award 2024 by Chelsea Greene, Rob Grobman & Edivan Guajajara)
We are happy to announce this year’s special topic which focuses on recognising the planet and its resources as limited as well as acknowledging how we need to rethink global and local processes as something more circular.
Our world has long been characterised by the idea that prosperity for all can be achieved through limitless growth. Growth is inherently embedded into our most commonly used measurements of success and power. The hope that technological innovation and economic expansion will lead us to a prosperous future has, however, led to a linear economic system, often at the expense of our planet.
The Green Revolution for instance, with technology-driven agricultural transformation in the 1940s-60s greatly increased food production. Yet in doing so, sustainable farming practices have been ignored, placing severe pressure on our natural systems to sustain this growth. Likewise, due to increased production capabilities, many goods are now designed for single use or short lifespans before being disposed of â and with them the natural resources that were needed to make them. Additionally, the amount of single-use plastic in the oceans and landfills, which has a disastrous impact on human and environmental health, especially in the Global South, is growing by the day. The lifespan of products such as clothing is getting shorter and shorter, encouraging a throwaway culture. Even supposedly ecological products such as electric car batteries are contributing to the problem, as their production requires rare earths and materials which are recycled far too rarely after use.
However, this consumption has limits. With the concept of âPlanetary Boundariesâ, environmental scientists have identified nine critical limits that must not be exceeded if the Earth is to avoid rapid and catastrophic environmental change. Six of these boundaries â including biodiversity loss, land use change and climate change â have already been exceeded. Even more alarmingly, if our way of life continues unchecked, we will pass an identified âthreshold of no-returnâ.The findings make it clear that the ecological balance on Earth has always depended on complex cycles that ensure that the available resources can serve again and again as the basis of life for all kinds of life forms. The linear lifestyle and economy of humans is breaking these cycles and jeopardising the planetâs age-old balance.
Still there is hope: the successful regeneration of the ozone layer shows that global action can be effective â with the âStratospheric ozone depletionâ being the one Planetary Boundary already in recovery. Change is necessary â and possible. Switching to a circular economy in which resources are used efficiently, recycled and integrated into natural systems offers a real alternative to a throwaway culture. However, this change requires not only individual action, but also structural changes. It requires a political framework, economic incentives and a social consensus.
At this yearâs edition of the Greenmotions Film Festival, we want to tell stories that make this change tangible: Documentaries about innovative solutions and visionary projects that show that moving away from a linear to a circular way of living and consumption is possible. Films that inspire, challenge and motivate people to take action. Letâs work together to shape the future within the Planetary Boundaries â cyclical, regenerative and sustainable.
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 roughly 1100 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!
Our winners this year were “Where We Used to Sleep” by MatthĂ€us Wörle and “We Are Gaurdians” by Chelsea Greene, Rob Grobman & Edivan Guajajara in the audience award category. “Cobalt Rush” by Quentin Noirfalisse & Arnaud Zajtman won the special topic award for our topic “United in Change: Striving for a Just Transition”. The prize for the best short film went to “The Man Who Mends Things” by Ann Farcey. Our young guests also voted for “Pond” by Lena von Döhren & Eva Rust as the winner of our shorts for kids category.
(Picture from “Where We Used to Sleep” co-winner of the audience award by MatthĂ€us Wörle)
Impressions from the festival
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