DCEFF Audience Award
for Best Feature FilmThe DCEFF Audience Awards for best feature and best short were established for the 2021 Virtual Festival and allow our audience to make their voices heard by voting on which films they enjoyed the most. $3,000 is awarded each year to the winner of our Best Feature category, and $2,000 is awarded to the winner of our Best Short category. In 2023, audience voting took place during the virtual Earth Day Encores programming (April 18-23).
2023 Winner
The Plastic Bag Store
An adaption of the critically-acclaimed art installation, this unique film takes viewers on a journey across time for a wistful look at the future of our planet.
Inventive puppetry, shadow play, and intricate handmade sets tell the darkly comedic, sometimes tender story of how the overabundance of plastic waste we leave behind might be misinterpreted by future generations.
DCEFF Audience Award
for Best Short FilmThe DCEFF Audience Awards for best feature and best short were established for the 2021 Virtual Festival and allow our audience to make their voices heard by voting on which films they enjoyed the most. $3,000 is awarded each year to the winner of our Best Feature category, and $2,000 is awarded to the winner of our Best Short category. In 2023, audience voting took place during the virtual Earth Day Encores programming (April 18-23).
2023 Winner
Between Earth & Sky
Nalini Nadkarni is a world-renowned ecologist who climbs trees in the rainforest canopy to study “what grows back” after an ecological disturbance. In 2015, her rope snapped on a research climb, and she fell fifty feet from a tree and nearly died. After making a miraculous recovery, Nalini begins to explore a new research subject — herself.
Between Earth & Sky follows Nalini as she prepares for another research climb. In the process, she unearths the roots of other disturbances she faced throughout her life. As she revisits the site of her fall in the Olympic Peninsula, her past, present, and future converge.
