Connect4Climate is thrilled to be back at Venice Film Festival, this year joining the world premiere of new documentary The Great Green Wall at Giornate Degli Autori. Produced by MAKE Waves and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) with major support by long-standing Connect4Climate partner Building Energy, the film features Malian singer and activist Inna Modja as she travels across Africa, visiting countries along the Great Green Wall path from Senegal to Djibouti where sustainability and reforestation projects are taking root.  Along the journey, she witnesses the myriad ways that climate change is impacting communities – increased desertification, drought, ​resource scarcity, radicalization, conflict, ​migration – and is inspired by stories of resilience, optimism and collective action.  See the brand new trailer here:

Directed by Jared P. Scott (Age of Consequences) and executive produced by Oscar-nominated Fernando Meirelles (City of God), the documentary features a host of original songs inspired by the vision of the Great Green Wall that Inna Modja creates in collaboration with musicians she meets on her journey. As Modja passionately pursues an African Dream for a generation seeking to control their own destiny, she reminds us of the enormity of the task ahead and that time is not on our side. The resulting journey of hope, hardship and perseverance reveals our shared human condition, ​reflecting a deeper moral and existential question we all must confront: “Will we take action before it's too late?”

The Great Green Wall will premiere at Venice Days – Giornate degli Autori on August 31st. To keep up to date with the exciting news from the team on the ground in Venice, follow @Connect4Climate @GreenWallAfrica on Twitter and join the conversation with #Giornate2019, #GreatGreenWall and #Film4Climate.

“This is a hopeful documentary about a positive initiative.”​ – Fernando Meirelles, Executive Producer

At the Guadalajara International Film Festival in 2018, Connect4Climate introduced an exciting opportunity for Latin American filmmakers passionate about climate action and sustainability more broadly: the Film4Climate Post-Production Award. Partnering with the leading post-production company LaserFilm, C4C launched a work-in-progress film contest whose winner received full post-production for their sustainability- and social issues-minded film at zero cost to them. The second-ever recipient of this award, “Son of Ox,” just wrapped its post-production at LaserFilm this spring.

Now, in collaboration with the Chilean Corporation of Documentary (CCDoc), C4C is bringing the popular contest back for a third round as a part of Conecta 2019, an event taking place from December 10 through 13 alongside COP25 in Santiago. If you’re from Latin America, have a film in the works focusing on one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, and would like to submit your film to be considered for the Film4Climate Award at Conecta, you have until August 28 to do so! LaserFilm will once again be providing the winner with full post-production at its studio in Rome, Italy.

As C4C’s Program Manager Giulia Braga says, “We are tremendously excited to collaborate with CCDoc and to continue the long-standing partnership with LaserFilm. Film is perhaps the most uniquely effective medium for amplifying the need to act urgently to protect our planet.”

CCDoc’s Executive Director Flor Rubina adds that films can “give audiences quite a special focus on social and environmental issues relevant and vital to advancing our culture and society.” Andrea Di Nardo, Managing Director at LaserFilm, agrees: “Movies are mirroring the major issues of our society,” he says. “LaserFilm has a mission: producing movies that raise awareness about SDGs. And that's the goal of our prize as well.”

Requirements

  Films completed after Januray1, 2017 and never been submitted to SEFF before

  Both short and feature-length films can be submitted.

Call for Entries