Amid a climate crisis that is seeing record heat temperatures broken around the globe, The Redford Center has announced the 12 filmmaking teams who are winners of its Environmental Impact Film grants for 2022-2023. The center — the environmental media nonprofit founded in 2005 by Robert Redford and his late son James Redford — provides funding biannually to a select group of cinematic storytellers who focus on environmental justice, intersectional themes and solutions that improve the health of the planet.
“We view these artists as translators: humanizing the issues we so urgently need to address and giving voice to the frontline activists who are continually overlooked by the mainstream film and environmental sectors and who, quite frankly, are leading us out of the problem,” Jill Tidman, executive director of The Redford Center, tells The Hollywood Reporter of the winning teams, noting that the center is one of the few groups in the industry that exclusively funds independent environmental documentaries while also providing support to its grantee filmmakers.
The Redford Center began its filmmaker funding program in 2016 and this year’s selections represent the fourth class of winners. More than 250 projects from 20 countries applied for the grants — which are supported by the New York Community Trust and the Walton Family Foundation — via an open call.
The dozen projects selected by The Redford Center focus on such diverse subjects as Black farmers in Oregon addressing issues surrounding food sovereignty and land ownership; whistleblowers in Siberia calling attention to an abandoned coal mine that has caught fire under their neighborhood; members of the Blackfeet Tribe who are working to bring back wild bison to their native lands; and a group of fishermen in Mexico who created a marine refuge off the Yucatan Peninsula. Six of the projects are from the U.S. and three from Mexico with Canada, Bulgaria and Turkey also represented among the winning filmmakers. Each $20,000 grant can be spent toward production and impact campaign expenses, while GoPro for a Cause provides in-kind equipment support and grantees may also apply for second-year funds.
The Redford Center has also announced a new group of grant advisers from the film, environmental and nonprofit worlds who will work with the grantee filmmakers on story development, the creation of impact campaigns surrounding their documentaries and strategies for film distribution. The team of advisers includes Catapult Film Fund co-founder Lisa Kleiner Chanoff; Cheryl Hirasa, managing director of Pacific Islanders in Communications; FilmAid director Gita Saedi Kiely; documentary producer Simon Kilmurry; Sub-Genre founder Brian Newman; Tracy Rector, managing director, storytelling, at Nia Tero; HiddenLight Productions’ Brenda Robinson; Megha Agrawal Sood, director, head of climate story unit, at Doc Society; KindHumans co-CEO Justin “Hoost” Wilkenfeld; and Earth Alliance’s Samantha Wright (formerly svp of social impact at Participant).
“These 12 films are very special. They represent a mix of stories and solutions that our industry and audiences urgently need, now more than ever,” says Robinson, head of film finance and inclusion strategies at HiddenLight. “At a time when the climate emergency is finally on almost everyone’s mind — including growing acknowledgment from Hollywood — these films spotlight issues we all need to know about and support before it’s too late.”
Adds Tidman, “This grantee cohort in particular is a signal for the film industry that now is the time to shift toward inclusive climate storytelling. These projects demonstrate how it can be done, and we are infinitely grateful to be a part of these impactful storytelling journeys.”
Among the previous winners of Redford Center grants — which to date have totaled $1.3 million — are such documentaries as Netflix’s Youth V Gov; Peabody Award winner Inventing Tomorrow; and the Green New Deal documentary To The End.
The winners of The Redford Center’s 2022-2023 Environmental Impact Film Grants are:
Black Snow
Alina Simone (director), Kirstine Barfod (producer), Harry Vaughn (co-producer)
Synopsis: Whistleblowers in a remote Siberian settlement discover an old coal mine that has caught fire beneath their neighborhood.
Bring Them Home
Daniel Glick, Ivy MacDonald and Ivan MacDonald (directors)
Synopsis: members of the Blackfeet Nation who are working to bring back wild bison to native land.
Emergent City
Jay Arthur Sterrenburg and Kelly Anderson (directors), Brenda Ávila-Hanna (producer)
Synopsis: A Brooklyn community grapples with the future of New York City’s last working waterfront as it faces gentrification, development and the need for jobs.
Finding Home
Maria Stanisheva (director), Manon Messiant (producer)
Synopsis: An animated documentary series and interactive installation spotlighting climate refugees uprooted from their homes and forced to relocate due to ocean-level rise, drought, hurricanes, tsunamis and more.
Fruit of Soil
Faith E. Briggs (director), Tracy Nguyen-Chung (producer)
Synopsis: The story of Shantae and Art Johnson, part of the Black farmers movement in Oregon addressing issues of food sovereignty, land ownership, community healing and place reclamation.
Kay
Jimena Mancilla and Ángel Ricardo Linares Colmenares (directors)
Synopsis: Fisherman in a small town Mexico create a marine refuge to protect fish reserve off the Yucatan Peninsula.
Our Seeds (working title)
Erhan Arik (director), Meryem Yavuz (producer, cinematographer)
Synopsis: In northeastern Turkey, a farming couple — who are still keeping a 1,500-year-old ancestral seed alive — face the fact that they cannot leave the fate of the seed in the hands of their children.
Sacrifice Zones: The 48217
Ben Corona (director)
Synopsis: In southwest Detroit, one resident, who has documented the air pollution from a refinery through her photography, works to organize her neighbors.
Seeing Green
Nadine Pequeneza and Su Rynard (directors)
Synopsis: Authors and scientists Robin Wall Kimmerer, Suzanne Simard and Paco Calvo provides fresh insights on the plant world and the ways in which they are highly evolved creatures.
The Last Chinamperos (working title)
Megan Alldis (director), Patricio Buenrostro-Gilhuys (producer)
Synopsis: Just outside of Mexico City, in the canals of Xochimilco and against an onslaught of urbanization, an Indigenous father and son fight to carry on their ancestral legacy of chinampas, an Aztec farming system made of floating gardens that maximize water retention for crops.
The Queendom
Otilia Portillo (director)
Synopsis: As the magical — and profitable — qualities of mushrooms become more mainstream, a crucial element of their story is being erased: Indigenous women.
Undamming The Klamath
Shane Anderson (director)
Synopsis: Set against the backdrop of the largest dam removal and river restoration effort the world has seen, the film follows the ongoing multi-generational, Indigenous-led effort to restore the Klamath River and its wild salmon runs that have been the source of nourishment, culture and spirituality since time immemorial.
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