The virtually held All Environment Living Things Film Festival is in its second year now. The fest has just announced the winners of this year's edition of the event across five categories—international shorts, international features, Indian shorts, Indian features and student films.
One of the winners in the spotlight was Oscar nominated Indian feature film Moti Bagh, directed by Nirmal Chander that showcased a tale about the ghost villages of Uttarakhand.
A six-member jury team evaluated 44 films out of the submissions, judging the films on five aspects—originality, emotional impact, relevance to ALT EFF, narrative and direction and production quality. THE WEEK spoke to ALT EFF festival director Kunal Khanna, who hopes to make the festival a grand in-person event next year.
Tell us about the concept of this festival and how did it all begin?
I was living in Australia for 13 years before coming back to India in 2018 and in my time there I actually worked with a few cultural events and art and film festivals and it was there that I began to understand the power of a festival as a medium that can impact and influence our beliefs and perspectives to bring about a change in the world. My background in environment and sustainability merged with the space I wanted to be in. I noticed that there is an absence of a prominent environment-centric film festival in India which is widely accepted despite the fact that we have a plethora of environmental issues to deal with. Also I live in the beautiful hill station of Panchgani in Maharashtra and the natural beauty of the place too, inspired me to take up ALT EFF. My colleagues and co-founders are filmmakers and that's how we started thinking of an environment-centric film festival in 2019 and we had our first edition last year which was virtual because of the pandemic.
How did you select the films that would be a part of this festival?
There is a platform called FilmFreeway which is a platform used by all major film festivals around the world. We put up our festival up there as well and started scanning films that were environment-centric. Last year we had 100 film submissions of which we picked 33 films as the finalists. This year we had films that had a significantly higher calibre and quality and of the 125 submissions, we finalised on 44 films that are truly exceptional.
What is the kind of response you received this time?
Last year in our inaugural year, the compulsion of going virtual came as a blessing because we could reach a wider audience; almost 5000 people were in attendance from both, India and overseas. This year we have doubled that.
Which film from the festival is your personal favourite?
Internationally, one of my favourite film is Youth V Gov in which 21 young Americans sue the American government for of its inaction that led to the climate emergency which the world faces at present. In that film they show how inspite of all the information and knowledge regarding climate change available with the government since the 1970s and '80s, it did not take any measures to control it. As a result, the youth under the age of 18 from across the world is shown taking their respective governments to court and demanding answers from them. So, that's one very interesting film. In the Indian category, I personally like the film 'Moti Bagh' which is a film based on migration from rural India into the cities and how various villages in Uttarakhand are turning into ghost villages because people are not living there anymore. This is a story on how the rural landscape changes.
What is the message your festival aims to send across?
A message of hope. We also want to create awareness on our environment, ecological systems and the world around us. This will inspire people around the world to mobilise for change and understand how they can in their personal capacities contribute towards making the planet a much more greener place to live in.