2023 Winners
Here are the results of the 2023 Outer Banks Environmental Film Festival!
Audience Selection and Best Feature
The Smell of Money
Dir. Jaime Berger
Runtime: 01:24:00
A century after her grandfather claimed his freedom from slavery, Elsie Herring and her rural North Carolina community fight the world's largest pork corporation for their freedom to enjoy fresh air, clean water, and a life without the stench of manure.
Best Short Film
The Box of Life
Dir. Benjamin P.W. Cheer, Manuel Baechlin
Runtime: 6:30
After leaving his Data Analytics job in Boston and moving to Ottawa, Canada to be with his wife, Akil found himself faced with unemployment. The solution? Worms. An at home composting experiment now turned full-time occupation.
Best International Film
The Story of the Leatherback
Dir. Alongkot Chukaew
Runtime: 11:04
An account of the Leatherback Sea Turtle, the largest species of turtle on Earth, through the eyes of a 12 year-old boy who has been keeping up with its status and journey in Thailand for 6 years. Its declining population, its plight and how to save the sanctuary where they were born, so that they can have a place to return to lay their eggs. “If all of us do our best, we will be able to preserve their home,… our home.”
Best Indigenous Film
Paddle Tribal Waters
Dir. Paul Robert Wolf Wilson, Rush Sturges
Runtime: 9:00
When the largest dam removal project in history begins, a group of indigenous youth learn to whitewater kayak in hopes of becoming the first people to paddle the restored river from source to sea.
Best Film by an Emerging Filmmaker
Fire & Blood
Dir. Madison Cavalchire
Runtime: 27:29
The rural community of Seven Springs, North Carolina has a long history of survival. After being nearly destroyed during the Civil War, a fire swept through the town in the early 1920s almost wiping it out entirely. More recently, hurricanes are pushing the already struggling small town to the brink of collapse, as severe flooding has left it virtually beyond repair. Seven Springs’ demise would mean a loss of identity, culture, and community for those who still call it home. Fire & Flood paints a video portrait of this charming place and the community that is fighting to keep it afloat against all odds.
Best Film Highlighting a Hidden Story
Keeper of the Bay
Dir. Ashley LoFaso
Runtime: 01:03:33
A documentary film about marine conservation through the eyes of a native Hawaiian woman as she struggles to continue a family baykeeping legacy.
Best Film Highlighting Religion/Spirituality and the Environment
Eskawata Kayawai
Dir. Lara Jacoski, Patrick Dequech Belem
Runtime: 01:10:26
In the heart of the Amazon Rainforest, the Huni Kuin people are undergoing a profound renaissance of their identity. After enduring decades of slavery, massacres, and cultural suppression, their resurgence began in 2000. Two decades later, they're thriving at a cultural peak, rediscovering and embracing their true heritage.
Other Selections from 2023
Longleaf Forever
Dir. Laura Albritton
Runtime: 16:38
Longleaf Forever is a short documentary film that plunges viewers into one of the most biologically diverse ecosystems on the planet. Home to hundreds of rare plants and animals, longleaf pine forests once covered 90 million acres in the American South. Today, conservationists and land managers are turning a history of habitat loss and decline into a hopeful environmental story of renewal. We hear from women and men who care passionately about these landscapes and the species which live within them: a forester in rural Georgia, a Native longleaf needle basket maker, a young Black botanist, and fire ecologists who study the essential role of regular cycles of fire in the health of longleaf forests. Made with assistance from the GA Dept of Natural Resources' Wildlife Division, The Longleaf Alliance, and The Environmental Resources Network (TERN).
The Invisible Forest
Dir. Andy Costa
Runtime: 27:28
In a time of advanced deforestation in the Amazon, we delve into the stories of struggle and resilience of individuals who view the forest as an inseparable part of their lives. These are people who shield the forest, confront the harassment of invaders, and safeguard the transmission of their knowledge and culture in the pursuit of caring for the planet's largest tropical rainforest. This documentary uncovers their journey and dedication to preserving the Amazon's vital legacy.
Save Our Soil
Dir. Ayush Talukder
Runtime: 6:33
A Student created Documentary that highlights the Great risk to Global Soil within the next 50 years and what we need to drive legislation for.
Sentient Souvenirs
Dir. Pearl Elizabeth Marley
Runtime: 17:17
An educational, short documentary that explores tourist-shop hermit crabs and how detrimental, widespread and unregulated the hermit crab industry really is.
Heart of Maui
Dir. David Ehrenberg
Runtime: 7:30
This National Park Service film follows two biologists fight to save a bird species so rare, there are only 200 left on the planet. The extinction event of our lifetime is unfolding inside Haleakala National Park's remote backcountry. Discover what will be lost if humans do not take take action to save these rare Maui forest birds.
Redlined Reimagined
Dir. Christopher Jorelle Gillespie
Runtime: 46:16
The goal of this policy ethnographical project is to elevate historically-redlined communities within the federal policy
space. Redlined communities need a formal definition with the policy landscape that will provide grounds for the establishment of federal initiatives and programs.
Defining "redlined communities" cannot be accomplished through geographic maps alone, in fact, it is more about the things we cannot see. That is, a collective experience that impacts 11 million Americans in 11 million different ways.
Through street interviews within redlined communities, direct communication with people from historically-redlined communities will be used to inform a definition of "redlined communities that will provide a federal path to a national problem.
Salted Earth
Dir. Ben Hemmings
Runtime: 19:30
"Salted Earth" plunges us into the heart of an invisible and creeping crisis that's transforming the Mid-Atlantic – the inexorable rise of sea levels. This hard-hitting, yet tenderly woven 20-minute documentary paints a vivid picture of an escalating environmental catastrophe, where the threat is not just the swelling sea, but the encroaching salt that kills forests and decimates arable land, but could also signal a return to the natural order of the Atlantic Coast.
Tides
Dir. Andre Silva
Runtime: 8:00
Filmed at Masonboro Island, an undeveloped barrier island in southeastern North Carolina, “Tides” contemplates the liminal space between the modern technological world and that more ecological dimension we label as “nature” or “the environment.”
Connected By Water
Dir. Will Freund
Runtime: 01:15:00
Humans are natural storytellers and that is how we make connections. Join Will Freund on a journey to hear perspectives from 9 people living along the coast of the United States southeastern coast about what they think of climate change.
Traveling solo over 1,000 miles along the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway in a Hobie Mirage Adventure Island from Miami, Florida to Norfolk, Virginia, he meets people from so many different backgrounds and learns more than he ever thought possible.
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