Check Out Past CEFF Films
Explore our collection of the 2017 festival films now available for streaming and click on titles for descriptions. Titles in green indicate films featured in the CEFF 4 Kids screening, and titles with a $ indicate films available to rent.
A Ghost in the Making (2017)
PLAY NOW (19 minutes)
Winner of 2017 CEFF Best Short Film Award
Everyone has heard about bee declines, but with so much attention focused on domesticated honeybees, someone has to speak up for the 4,000 species of native bees in North America. This is a story that photographer Clay Bolt wanted to tell from the moment he learned of the Rusty-patched Bumble Bee’s tenuous existence. For Clay, the Rusty-patched Bumble Bee was a living symbol for all the forgotten species out there.
Directed by: Morgan Heim & Neil Losin
A Plastic Ocean (2017) - $
RENT NOW (1 hour 40 minutes)
Winner of 2017 CEFF Best Feature Film Award
This film begins when journalist Craig Leeson, searching for the elusive blue whale, discovers plastic waste in what should be pristine ocean. In this adventure documentary, Craig teams up with free diver Tanya Streeter, and they travel to twenty locations around the world over the next four years to explore the fragile state of our oceans, uncover alarming truths about plastic pollution, and reveal working solutions that can be put into immediate effect.
Directed by: Craig Leeson
American Psychosis (2017)
PLAY NOW (15 minutes)
Winner of 2017 CEFF Best of the Fest Award
Pulitzer Prize winning Journalist, Author and Activist Chris Hedges, discusses modern day consumerism, totalitarian corporate power and living in a culture dominated by pervasive illusion.
Directed by: Amanda Zackem
An Acquired Taste (2017) - $
Reversing a decade of cellophane-wrapped meals, three urban teens unplug, take up arms, and show their parents what it means to responsibly put food on the table.
Directed by: Vanessa LeMaire
Belo Monte: After the Flood (2017)
The fight against building the world’s third-largest hydroelectric dam in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon is over. A dam is built, a forest flooded and now a city and Indigenous groups deal with the fallout of broken promises, vapid boasts of progress and a very uncertain future.
Directed by: Todd Southgate
Between Earth and Sky: Climate Change on the Last Frontier (2017)
In the vast wilderness of Alaska the earth is changing, threatening the history and culture of native peoples, natural landscapes, and the habitats of wild life. Between Earth and Sky examines how climate change is rapidly affecting Alaska, and will soon affect us all.
Directed by: Paul Hunton
Change for Chimps (2017)
A young girl’s love for chimpanzees sends her on a journey to raise funds to save chimps from captivity, in hopes to deliver the funds to her hero Dr. Jane Goodall.
Directed by: Lisa Mann
Chrome (2017)
Salmon and steelhead bring the power of the ocean a thousand miles inland, but they also bring signs of troubled times. Follow obsessed steelhead fly anglers as they await the migration, the explosive hook.
Directed by: Jeremy Roberts
City of Trees (2017) - $
City of Trees tells a deeply-personal story about the struggle to implement a high-stakes, stimulus-funded green job training program at the height of the recession. The film follows the point-of-view of three long-term unemployed DC residents hired by the program — Charles, Michael, and James; and Steve, the director tasked with managing the multi-million dollar stimulus grant.
Directed by: Brandon Kramer
Fairview Net Zero Club - Two time PEYA Recipient (2017)
PLAY NOW (7 minutes)
Featured in 2017 CEFF 4 Kids Screening
Fairview High School in Boulder Colorado’s Net Zero Club is a two-time President’s Environmental Youth Award (PEYA) Winner. This video highlights the various environmental projects the students have completed over the years.
Directed by: Wendy Dew & Json Marruffo
Fields of Change (2017)
PLAY NOW (20 minutes)
Featured in 2017 CEFF 4 Kids Screening
This short documentary film explores the possible uses for the HC&S sugarcane lands and consults experts in the community about what the end of the sugarcane era could mean for Maui. The film was made by three 9th grade students in the Huliau Environmental Filmmaking Club program on Maui.
Directed by: Malia Cahill
From Flint: Voices of a Poisoned City (2017)
This documentary tells the story of the Flint Water Crisis from the perspectives of those who have experienced this tragedy first hand and from activists on the ground working through grass-root organizations to make a difference. While the national news media has been covering this event through the governmental point of view, From Flint takes you inside the city to uncover this incident first hand.
Directed by: Elise Conklin
Gods Acre (2017)
This is the story of an older Aboriginal man (LORNE CARDINAL) being forced to adapt to a constantly changing world. Climate change has altered the way people live, bringing droughts and floods to previously unaffected areas. And yet, a man continues to live alone in the wilderness like his family before him.
Directed by: Kelton Stepanowich
Joshua Tree: Threatened Wonderland (2017)
Joshua Tree National Park, with its mysterious rock formations and iconic trees, has long provided a haven for those seeking an inspirational experience. But with current threats from air pollution, fires, and global warming, scientists believe the majority of Joshua Trees may be gone in less than 100 years. As the trees disappear, this amazing wonderland will be changed forever.
Directed by: Bill Wisneski
Look Who's Minding Our Planet (2017)
Beautiful photography, nature in all her glory at the New York Botanical Garden.
Then, behind the scenes, we meet the impassioned scientists and young interns who study plants at their minutest levels, there and around the world. Years of painstaking work to unlock nature’s secrets, and how we can work to save and protect the planet.
Directed by: Sara Lukinson
Love of Place (2017)
When an invasive species plant threatens to take over a beautiful desert river, an obsessive park ranger sets out to kill it.
Directed by: Brian Olliver
Our Desert Farms (2017)
Our Desert Farms examines challenges of the Central Arizona growers in the thirsty Southwest.
Directed by: Anna Augustowska
Poisoning Paradise (2017)
PLAY NOW (1 hour 17 minutes)
Winner of 2017 CEFF Spirit of Activism Award
Journey to the world of Native Hawaiians, whose communities are surrounded by experimental test sites for genetically engineered seed corn and pesticides sprayed upwind of their homes, schools, hospitals, and shorelines. Hear from scientific experts and healthcare professionals as they expose the effects of environmental injustice on a local population.
Directed by: Keely Shaye Brosnan & Teresa Tico
Predator / Prey: The Fight for Isle Royale Wolves (2017)
The fragile ecosystem of Isle Royale National Park is dominated by the predator/prey relationship between wolves and moose. But on the biggest island in the biggest lake on Earth, things have unraveled. With wolves dwindling and moose booming, the National Park Service must decide how to manage these iconic species in a time when climate change threatens to undermine both.
Directed by: Brian Kaufman
RiverBlue (2017) - $
Can a change in fashion save the planet? Following international river conservationist, Mark Angelo, RIVERBLUE spans the globe to infiltrate one of the world’s most pollutive industries, fashion. Narrated by clean water supporter Jason Priestley, this groundbreaking documentary examines the destruction of our rivers, its effect on humanity, and the solutions that inspire hope for a sustainable future.
Directed by: David McIlvride
Sanctuary: Fifi (2017)
The mini web series ‘Sanctuary’ takes a peek into the transition of rescued exotic animals as they make a new home for themselves at The Wild Animal Sanctuary in Keenesburg, Colorado, after spending their lives plastered between chilly metal bars. This episode focuses on Fifi, a Syrian Brown Bear.
Directed by: Brianna Cillessen
The Corridor (2017)
This film explores the conflict between our desire to hold on to natural areas and the ever-pressing push for development, concentrating on one location, and one road.
Directed by: Sumi Skellam
The Gateway Bug (2017)
Over 2 billion people on earth eat insects for protein. This documentary explores how changing daily eating habits can feed humanity in an uncertain age, one meal at a time.
Directed by: Johanna B Kelly
The Private Lives of Salmon (2017)
Catch a rare underwater look at wild Alaskan salmon on the spawning grounds as they complete the most important act of their lives–bringing on the next generation. Award winning writer-naturalist Richard Nelson explains the intricately choreographed mating dance of salmon.
Directed by: Liz McKenzie
Think Like A Scientist: Boundaries (2017)
Humans construct boundaries — around our homes, our neighborhoods, and our nations — to bring order to a chaotic world. But we rarely consider how these boundaries affect other creatures. In this episode of Think Like A Scientist, we meet conservation photographer Krista Schlyer, who has spent the last seven years documenting the environmental effects of the U.S./Mexico border wall, and biologist Jon Beckmann, who studies how man-made barriers influence the movement of wildlife.
Directed by: Nathan Dappen
Think Like A Scientist: Gorongosa (2017)
In the 1960’s Gorongosa National Park was one of the best national parks in all of Africa. Its slogan was, ‘Where Noah Left the Ark.’ But, 30 years of war in Mozambique (first a war with Portugal for independence and then a 15-year civil war) devastated the park. Gorongosa was at the epicenter of the conflict and 95% of its wildlife were killed to feed the soldiers or poached for ivory to purchase more weapons. The war is over and a group of scientists, conservationists, and Mozambicans are bringing back the park.
Directed by: Nathan Dappen
Tree Huggers (2017)
British Columbia is one of the last places on earth logging old growth forests. In the face of climate change, old growth forestry isn’t just a threat to species living in the area — it’s a threat to the world itself.
Directed by: Jordan Yeager
Tropical Birds Confront Warming (2017)
An ornithologist worries that birds in Peru’s Man National Park could be threatened by global warming.
Directed by: Daniel Grossman
Two Towns (2017)
In the frigid Zanskar Valley of northwest India, climate change is proving to be a boon for some farmers and a curse for others.
Directed by: Daniel Grossman
We the People 2.0 (2017) - $
American citizens who are normally marginalized, forgotten and left to fend against toxic dumps and other violations, come to understand that the only way to survive is to frontally challenge the oligarchy that has destroyed democracy in the United States. From the director of The 11th Hour, Leila Conners. Narrated by Walton Goggins.
Directed by: Leila Conners
Whale Talk (2017)
A fantastical underwater view on the life and loves of a young whale, based on the little we know of how sperm whales communicate.
Directed by: Meredith Leich
When We're Gone (2017)
PLAY NOW (3 minutes)
Featured in 2017 CEFF 4 Kids Screening
A musical remake of ‘The Cup Song’ by Anna Kendrick in the film Pitch Perfect, this film highlights Hawaii’s endangered species and the threats they face as species vanish beneath the cups.
Directed by: Malia Cahill
Young Voices for the Planet: 10 Short Success Stories (2017)
PLAY NOW (59 minutes)
Featured in 2017 CEFF 4 Kids Screening
Young Voices for the Planet is a compilation of 10 stories of youth solutions to the climate crisis. The youth in the YVFP films learn about climate change, are concerned, and take action to reduce CO2. Their passion, commitment and earnestness give the films an emotional punch: they move adult audiences to tears, but they affect young people differently empowering them to act.
Directed by: Lynne Cherry