Upcoming Events

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.

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.

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 Silver’s Latin American Film Festival and DCEFF

In this powerfully self-reflexive documentary, Swiss-Panamanian filmmaker Andrés Peyrot embeds himself alongside the Indigenous Kuna people in Panama’s Guna Yala islands to document their efforts to recover the lost film GOD IS A WOMAN. Made in 1975 while observing the Kuna’s matrilocal society by the acclaimed anthropologist Pierre-Dominique Gaisseau, the documentary, which Gaisseau promised to share with the community, was subsequently confiscated by its funders and never seen by the subjects. After elements are uncovered in Paris, Peyrot follows the endeavors of Kuna elders trying to track down the missing movie and those of the local intellectual Arysteides Turpana and a younger Kuna generation determined to tell their own stories.

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

In this powerfully self-reflexive documentary, Swiss-Panamanian filmmaker Andrés Peyrot embeds himself alongside the Indigenous Kuna people in Panama’s Guna Yala islands to document their efforts to recover the lost film GOD IS A WOMAN. Made in 1975 while observing the Kuna’s matrilocal society by the acclaimed anthropologist Pierre-Dominique Gaisseau, the documentary, which Gaisseau promised to share with the community, was subsequently confiscated by its funders and never seen by the subjects. After elements are uncovered in Paris, Peyrot follows the endeavors of Kuna elders trying to track down the missing movie and those of the local intellectual Arysteides Turpana and a younger Kuna generation determined to tell their own stories.

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

Deep within the Amazon, the Yanomami people are facing an existential threat. Since a highway tore through their territory in the early 1970s, miners have encroached on their land, bringing violence and disease. Filmmakers Eryk Rocha (CINEMA NOVO) and Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha go beyond ethnography, allowing the Yanomami people to reach out and offer a blistering environmental warning: they are the first line of defense, but they alone cannot stop the sky from falling.