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 year’s Special Topic, “Recognition: Shining a Light on the Invisible”, 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 “non-productive”. 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 – 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.

(Picture by Dominik Lange on Unsplash)