ALT EFF 2023 has roped in actress and producer, Alia Bhatt as an advocate for the festival. The film festival focuses on using cinema as a medium to engage in conversations around pertinent subjects of nature, environment, and climate change.
Film festivals are a great place - they are fun, entertaining, and even educational. But it’s not every day that you come across a film festival that talks about the environment. The terms ‘environment’ and ‘climate change’ sound like they belong either in textbooks or in newspapers. However, the ‘All Living Things Environmental Film Festival’ aka ALT EFF is a film festival that will feature movies on environmental issues and as the name suggests, every living thing. Being India’s largest environmental film festival, it will have over 60 films from across 50 countries from December 1 to 10, 2023.
Actor, producer and entrepreneur, Alia Bhatt’s production house Eternal Sunshine Productions is joining forces with the festival as Bhatt is the festival advocate. The jury is impressive too; it includes Oscar-winning filmmaker Kartiki Gonsalves of The Elephant Whisperers fame, David Holmgren, the co-originator of Permaculture in the world, Satyajit Bhatkal, co-director of Satyamev Jayate, and Dr Mike Pandey, India's most renowned environmental filmmaker.
We spoke with ALT EFF Festival producer, Laura Christie and learned what we can expect from the festival, what goes behind the screen, and more and here's what she had to say!
What inspired the name "All Living Things" for the festival?
"We played around with a lot of different names and landed on ALT EFF because it has a nice dual meaning. One is referring to that absolutely all living things are interconnected. Climate change is interconnected. Our existence, coexistence, and coextinctions are completely interconnected. So, we named the festival ‘All Living Things’, because we need to talk about everything - from bacteria, and tiny microscopic plankton all the way up to huge animals like elephants, whales, and everything in between. The name is all-encompassing. The second meaning is that on old computers, when the system got stuck, we would press ALT+F to force quit and reboot the system. Similarly, with climate change, we need to reboot and start thinking fresh. Hence, the name ALT EFF."
What kind of films and workshops can we expect at ALT EFF?
"We curate them from all over the world very intentionally. We curate films that are, of course, cinematic, but also focus on human solutions. So, that takes us to activism, regeneration, and citizen science and the ways in which people all over the world are standing up against a broken system. The films and workshops are more action-oriented, and solution-oriented. As opposed to just highlighting the problem, we really want to show people solutions."
What are the kind of subtopics about climate change that we can expect to see at ALT EFF?’
"The program is really vast. There's a great film called 'Into the Ice' that looks at the ice shell melting, but from an on-ground perspective. So, we can see conversations around ice melting and permafrost. We'll have a lot of films about waste, landfills, and solutions around them. We have very poignant films about the "green electrification" of our economy, and what actually is the cost to the “green economy” or the “sustainable economy”. We also have a lot of films on indigenous lifestyles such as indigenous ways of living, indigenous battles for land rights, and the changing livelihoods of many who live off the land in pastoral communities or fisherfolk communities. There are also some really creative films that are purely for the awe, joy, and wonder about the beautiful, astounding nature all around us."
While conducting the film festival, is the ALT EFF team taking any practical precautions to stay sustainable?
"Of course, that's always on the top of our minds as a festival. So, every festival will be a zero-waste experience. There will be no plastic water bottles and every festival event itself will be sustainably-minded."
Since it is a film festival, can the audience expect entertainment along with awareness?
"I'll give a really good example of the ALT-EFF festival winner “Pleistocene Park”, that we are showing on the opening night in Mumbai. And it is such a riot! All jury members were laughing throughout the film, as was I. It is so entertaining, and it is also a deep and poignant look at how the climate is changing, especially in northeast Siberia. The characters are absolutely hilarious and the filmmaking and story are also very funny. So, you'll see lots of entertainment, laughter, moments of joy and inspiration, and absolutely insane cinematography. Actually, we curate films in a way that not all films have a very direct documentary style of telling you climate facts. A lot of the films have human narratives that are related to the climate because that's a daily experience for many people around the world. So, you'll see all kinds of narratives, some humorous, some dramatic, some quite silly, and some quite artistic. But all of them are centered around the shared experience of being a part of nature and our shared experience of climate change."
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