Upcoming Events

Go ahead and mark your calendars for the 32nd Annual Environmental Film Festival, scheduled for March 21-30, 2024. Preparation has already begun, and we can’t wait to see you there.

Let’s keep the Earth Day momentum going! In co-presentation with the Temperance Alley Garden, join us for a short film program focused on local filmmakers and causes. The screening will be followed by a community conversation with a featured local filmmaker and community activists. RSVP NOT REQUIRED.

The film lineup includes:

• Shad Run, directed by Ben Dorger and Beckly Harlan
• Healing Baltimore’s Harbor, directed by Sirjaut Kaur Dhariwal
• People Rising: Ivy City, directed by Amanda Padilla & Ellie Walton
• Café Y Aves, directed by Roshan Patel

A post-screening discussion will include Roshan Patel (Resident Filmmaker at Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, filmmaker for Café y Aves), Rosie Stone (Legal Specialist at Namati, featured in PEOPLE RISING: IVY CITY) and Sebrena Rhodes (Community Organizer at Empower DC, featured in PEOPLE RISING IVY CITY). Moderated by DCEFF Festival Director Monica Schorn, and hosted by Stephen Stahr.

Bird Walk is a new documentary short featuring the birds and birders of RedGate Park in Rockville, Maryland, where more than 160 bird species have been sighted, and on the grassroots campaign which helped preserve the former golf course as a public park.

The screening will be followed by a panel discussion about the film and the lessons learned from the “Save RedGate Park” campaign that can be applied to the Rock Creek Park Golf Course for All campaign that aims to protect over 1,200 trees, birds, and wildlife habitats under threat from a plan to improve the golf course.

Panelists include:

• Vickie Baily, Activist Photographer
• Vanessa Bertelli, Organizer for Rock Creek Park Golf Course for All and National Park Service Volunteer Weed Warrior Leader
• Cintia Cabib, Producer, Bird Walk
• Samantha Krause, Minister of Birding, DC Bird Alliance
• Brian Wee, Ph.D., Science, Technology, and Policy Strategist on Global Environmental Change

Screening Partners:

• Busboys and Poets
• DC Bird Alliance
• DC EcoWomen
• Friends of Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens

The festival Films on the Green is coming back to DC for the summer. Free and open to the public, it offers a variety of French or Francophone movies. Bring your own chair or blanket and join us at sunset for this screening with Villa Albertine Washington DC.

Summer 1946. The Cousteau family, Jacques, his wife Simone, and their two children Philippe and Jean-Michel, reside in their beautiful house by the Mediterranean Sea. By day they dive, exploring the depths of the ocean, while by night they watch the stars. It’s paradise on Earth. But Jacques is never content. He longs to explore the world beneath the sea and believes in the virtues of progress. With his invention, the Aqualung, his recently acquired vessel, the Calypso, and a crew of free-spirited adventurers led by his wife, Jacques is ready to delve where no man has been before…

Free and open to the public. Registration is encouraged.

A Climate Forests Campaign Event Sponsored by REI Co-Op, Patagonia, and DCEFF

Join us for a screening of the new film Crown Jewels to learn more about the value of mature and old-growth forests, and the fight to protect them. The event will feature a panel discussion with Q&A with the director, film crew, and community members featured in the film. After the showing, you’ll have an opportunity to write a letter to the US Forest Service calling for safeguards for ancient forests on our public lands across the country.

A Co-presentation of AFI’s Latin American Film Festival and DCEFF

Adrift after the loss of her brother, 12-year-old Carla is dragged to the Galápagos Islands to accompany her biologist father on a weeklong conservation conference. Reinventing herself as “Island,” she’s left to explore the area on her own. She quickly strikes up friendships with the precocious Wiki, whose mother is also attending the conference, and the rakish local teen Darwin. They join Carla on a journey of self-discovery, together trekking into the heart of the island. Shot on location, Tania Hermida’s lyrical coming-of-age tale features the island’s gorgeous scenery and its unrivaled animal life as you’ve never seen it.

A Co-presentation of AFI’s Latin American Film Festival and DCEFF

Nicaragua is one of the top five exporters of beef to the United States, whose profits in the industry have grown by over 400 percent in the last decade — but at great cost to the Rama Indigenous people and the Kriol Afro-descendent population, whose protected land in the rainforests is increasingly encroached upon and stolen by cattle ranchers seeking new land for their herds. An alliance between the two communities has led to the creation of Forest Ranger squads searching the area for signs of illegal encroachment. PATROL follows one of these squads as they patrol the region, aided by an American conservationist, encountering increasingly worrying levels of deforestation and signs that larger cattle-owning businesses are fast approaching.

A Co-presentation of AFI’s Latin American Film Festival and DCEFF

Adrift after the loss of her brother, 12-year-old Carla is dragged to the Galápagos Islands to accompany her biologist father on a weeklong conservation conference. Reinventing herself as “Island,” she’s left to explore the area on her own. She quickly strikes up friendships with the precocious Wiki, whose mother is also attending the conference, and the rakish local teen Darwin. They join Carla on a journey of self-discovery, together trekking into the heart of the island. Shot on location, Tania Hermida’s lyrical coming-of-age tale features the island’s gorgeous scenery and its unrivaled animal life as you’ve never seen it.

Co-presented by AFI’s Latin American Film Festival and DCEFF

A ruminative road trip through the forests of the Chaco region in Paraguay, THE LAST sees director Sebastián Peña Escobar join his longtime friends Jota and Ulf, an ornithologist and entomologist, respectively, as they head toward one of the few remaining virgin forests spurred by rumors of its deforestation. While traversing barren landscapes, red and black with dust and ash where vibrant forests once stood, the trio’s conversations turn toward reflecting on the nature of mankind and whether the planet can be saved.