NaturVision film festival – Audi Environmental Foundation sponsors short film award

In 2023, two impressive films with very different themes shared the short film prize.

In "Sirens", director Ilaria Di Carlo shows coal-fired power plants in Germany in the past years of energy production. The film, which was shot exclusively from helicopters, documents the extreme human intervention in nature. It does so without the depiction of people and deliberately dispenses with the use of language. This intensifies the apocalyptic effect and the threatening feeling in the face of the destruction of nature.

The jury was equally fascinated by "Wrought". The film by Joel Penner and Anna Sigrithur documents the processes of decay when microorganisms do their work on our waste products and this transformation creates something new. The appealing visual aesthetics show the beauty of the microbiological processes of change by means of time-lapse. The poetics of the text and the background music make the film a scientific and artistic documentary that raises the question of the value of things and the development potential of change.

© NaturVision / My Neighbour is a Bear

The short film „My Neighbour is a Bear” focuses on Sabrina, a resident of the village Villalago located in the Apennin Mountains. Bears strolling around in her native region are nothing unusual. For more than 20 years she has been documenting these wild animals’ life which are stopping by in her mountain village every now and then. Conflicts? Far from it! It is a neighbourly relationship in which the villagers care for the animals and support Sabrina in doing her work.

The winning film impressed the jury with its authenticity, simple storytelling and humor. There is no classical storyteller – quite unusual for a nature film. That is also why the jury voted for “My Neighbour is a Bear” by Mattia Cialoni.

The film by Christian Lawes shows the complex and fascinating life of the sociable weaver - one of the most interesting birds in southern Africa. It builds the largest nests in the world, they surround the South African acacia trees. Several generations of this species, that has to withstand both internal conflicts and external threats, live in this complex nest system.

According to the jury, “Those in Grass Houses” provides dramatic and humorous insights into the colony and conveys a clear message: Together we are strong! According to the jury's statement, the cinematic arrangement impresses with its powerful images shot in Cinemascope and a pointed music.

The movie “Traces” by Belgian Regisseur Sébastian Pins from 2019 tells the story of a logger in the Andes who keeps track of his work with his horse in the course of seasons.

In the course of the year, from the perspective of a young girl, he shows how the old man looks after a pine forest and transports felled trees with his horse from corners that machines cannot reach. In this way, he avoids having to fell healthy pines to create transport routes and thus conserves part of the forest.

The short film shows todays’ youth as the driving force behind the preservation of forests and celebrates the symbiosis of humans, animals and forests.

The motto of the NaturVision short film competition in 2019 was “Circular Economy instead of collapse – nature leads the way”, because in nature, there is no such thing as waste. Everything is part of a continuous cycle.

The winner in this category is "Unravel" by Meghna Gupta, who takes us to India, where much of the clothing ends up, that has been discarded in the western industrialized countries. The film tells the story of female workers in a textile factory who sort these clothes and prepare them for recycling.  As part of their work, the women construct an image of the West that emerges in their imagination, inspired by the clothes. They imagine what life might be like for people in the rich countries where the discarded clothes come from and dream of traveling to those countries.

With her report, Meghna Gupta encourages people to think about absurd Western consumer habits such as fast fashion. The documentary film director has already received numerous awards for her work.

The competition 2018 was dedicated to the topic “The (In)Finite Nature of Plastic”. Within the competition a great variety of interesting, eye-opening movies, which deal with negative impact of plastic on the environment were submitted.

The winner of the short movie prize in 2018 was the Dutch activist, designer and film maker Dave Hakkens with his movie “Precious Plastic – The Story Behind“. The movie is about the evolution of the project “Precious Plastic“, which began in 2013 as Dave Hakkens graduation project at the Design Academy. The film captures all important milestones in Dave Hakkens project, starting with the initial idea, over various attempts to build a recycling machine and to choose the right material up to the final manual and the developing of a quite big community. The main goal of the project was to create awareness for the plastic pollution and to invent a machine, which makes it possible for everyone to recycle plastic.  The “Precious Plastic“-community has grown into a worldwide project with hundreds of supporters.  Other short film prize nominated movies in 2018 were among others “Die Beerdigung“ (the funeral) by Thomas Frick, “Rio im Müll“ (Rio in waste) by Anna Brass and “It’s a Plastic World“ by Andreas Tanner.