Young filmmakers from around the world enter festival of short movies about the environment shot on mobile devices
By Jay Stone
There’s a film from France in which a man in horror mask chops down a tree — but it’s really a young girl. There’s an Indian movie that illustrates the coming crisis by showing the hands of a person paying more and more money for smaller and smaller bottles of water, until, a few decades from now, there’s none left. There’s a British film about a man who becomes so irritated by the “mad prophet” of climate change that he kills him, only to discover that he has in fact killed the very air he breathes.
They’re all part of the Mobile Film Festival, a competition that challenged young filmmakers from around the world to make one-minute movies about climate change on their mobile devices. The organizers received 765 movies from 70 countries, and winnowed them down to 75 finalists.
It’s an official event of COP21, the Paris conference of scientists and politicians who are discussing climate change. It’s the first year that the film festival — founded 10 years ago — has had a theme, and organizer Bruno Smadja says he was overwhelmed by the number of entries.
“We’ve already had 10 million views around the world,” he said in a phone interview from Paris. “Ten million.”
Smadja started the festival when he got a phone that would take movies and had an idea that a festival could provide a level playing field — “like race car drivers all driving the same car” — for filmmakers. “One mobile, one minute, one film,” was the motto and French filmmakers competed for cash prizes and the chance to make their own short films (the first feature-length movie by a Mobile Film Festival filmmaker is now being shot.)
The project was so successful that the United Nations asked Smadja to make it part of COP21 and expand it to a worldwide competition.
The resulting entries include short comedies, horror films, dramas and more. Until Nov. 30, the public can vote for their favorite film by visiting the festival’s website, www.mobilefilmfestival.com. The films will remain there for several years and are available for school projects or other uses.
In addition, a jury led by Brazilian filmmaker Fernando Meirelles (City of God, The Constant Gardner) will award one filmmaker a grand prize of 30,000 Euros toward the production of a film.
The award will be handed out Dec. 7 in Paris as part of COP2.
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