Fashion waste, circular design, sustainable agriculture, illegal logging in the Amazon as well as the environmental impact of plastic and toxins such as “forever chemicals”, PFAS, were among the topics tackled in 26 fiction features, documentaries and animated flicks from all over the world screened at the Green Visions Potsdam festival (22-25 May), which is headed up by former Berlinale director Dieter Kosslick.

“Our approach is to see climate change differently, understand it better, and retell it with films, knowledge and optimism,” emphasises Kosslick. The films on show are accompanied by experts and scientists who offer an insight into the complexities of the subjects covered.

Moreover, the audience were able to check out various solutions for themselves at the “Market for Sustainable Living”, located in front of the Filmmuseum Potsdam, which served as the main venue for the four-day event. The array of products and services on display ranged from geothermal energy and plants grown from traditional seeds to organic food and drinks as well as fair-fashion clothing. In the documentary Responsible - There Is No Business to Be Done on a Broken Planet, French filmmakers Julien Demond and Tristan Lochon show sustainable companies that manage to work in a responsible way, prioritising people and our planet, while also making a profit.

A mystical trip into the Amazon is provided by Pia Marais in her feature Transamazonia [+lee también:
crítica
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entrevista: Pia Marais
ficha de la película], which is based on a true story. A child (Helena Zengel) is the only passenger who survives a plane crash and is saved by an indigenous person in the rainforest. As the daughter of a missionary, she grows up in the jungle. When illegal loggers threaten the land of the indigenous people, the teenager’s allegiance to her father is shaken. “We shot for several months in Brazil and French Guiana, and were shocked at how much of the Amazon has already been destroyed,” says Marais.

As the Earth’s green lung, the Amazon plays a crucial role for the climate because it absorbs large amounts of carbon dioxide and produces oxygen. Professor Anders Levermann, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, presented climate and environmental projections running up to the end of the century for different policy pathways. According to scientists, sustainability will remain a critical issue for decades to come, but ambitious measures can achieve a situation at least similar to 2015 by 2050, and significantly improve it by 2100.

Back in 1988, US Vice-President George H W Bush promised to actively tackle climate change until influential lobbyists intervened and prevailed, as documented in The White House Effect by Bonni Cohen, Pedro Kos and Jon Shenk. Indeed, fossil fuels need to stay in the ground. While Germany generates most of its electricity from renewables, Poland is planning to build its first nuclear power plant. The controversial documentary Spaltung by João Pedro Prado and Anton Yaremchuk, who studied at the Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf, is about this topic of nuclear power, which entails splitting nuclei as well as society.

Besides enormous concerns about how to deal with nuclear waste, there are further industries that are polluting the planet. The Green Visions Potsdam opening film, Dust to Dust by Kôsai Sekine, shows that 92 million tons of old clothes end up in landfills each year. Almost every single part of plastic in clothes or single-use items breaks into tiny particles that get into the air, water, soil and even our bodies. The documentary Plastic People by Ben Addelman shows that embryos in the womb can already absorb synthetic materials. In addition to the presence of plastic, all humans already have PFAS in their bodies. These substances are used for food packaging, cosmetics, outdoor clothing, cookware as well as firefighting foam. In the documentary How to Poison a Planet, Katrina McGowan takes a closer look at the environmental and health effects of these chemicals.

Besides raising awareness of critical topics, Green Visions Potsdam also presents solutions. The documentary Fungi: Web of Life gives a glimpse into the unknown world of fungi, which prove that it is possible to survive in a dramatically changing environment. The food of the future may potentially be sourced from seaweed, which has inhabited the planet for millions of years. Indeed, the documentary Seaweed Stories by Jake Summer reveals seaweed-related solutions to a variety of challenges.

Kosslick sums up: “We invite films and people to Potsdam that can show us alternatives […]. This includes experts on the circular economy, renewable energy sources and ethical manufacturing as well as the people manning the booths at the Market for Sustainable Living, offering useful tips for everyday life.”