Green Film Festival presents:
ARUBARA
In the remote hamlet of Arubara, Indonesia, a fishing family’s bond with the sea is tested when coral reef damage threatens their livelihoods, leading to the closure of their fishing grounds.
How best to preserve the values inherited from generations, when nature and time continue to change? Arubara is a village where life has long moved to the rhythm of the tides. Facing dwindling fish populations and with a vision to restore marine ecosystem diversity, the community decides to close the fishing grounds for several months despite depending on it for their livelihood. Will the gamble pay off?
Q&A with filmmaker expected after the screening.
HELLO WHALE
Hello Whale delves into southeast Alaska’s remote ocean ecosystems and threatened humpback whale community through the artistic lens of Michele Oka Doner. This ecopoetic documentary explores the relationships between vulnerable wildlife and conservation researchers fighting to protect them, using creative science-driven storytelling to inspire this vital waterscape’s safeguarding.
Q&A with filmmaker expected after the screening.
TIDES
Set on a remote Maine island where time is measured by tides, this luminous 16mm meditation follows lobstermen and kelp harvesters through wordless, weather-worn routines, revealing the quiet inheritances and elemental rhythms that bind a place to its people. A stark, immersive portrait of work, landscape, and the edges where endurance becomes poetry.
POWER OF THE PEOPLE
Yup’ik Indigenous leader Alannah Acaq Hurley led a campaign that stopped the proposed Pebble Mine megaproject in Alaska’s Bristol Bay. Alannah and a broad-based coalition won a historic EPA veto of the copper mining project. The victory safeguards Bristol Bay and its greater watershed—encompassing 25 million acres of wilderness, rivers, and wetlands and home to the largest wild salmon run in the world—from construction of what would have been North America’s largest open-pit mine.
For her epic victory, Alannah received the 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize for North America.
Q&A with filmmaker expected after the screening.
ABALONE STORIES: LOSS, CONNECTION, RENEWAL
Along California’s coast, something once abundant is slipping away.
For those who feel a deep connection to the ocean from sport divers to Native cultural traditions, the loss of red abalone is deeply felt. As ecosystems change, so do the relationships people have carried for generations.
Abalone Stories: Loss, Connection, Renewal invites us into these shifting connections, where loss is undeniable and what comes next is still being shaped.
Q&A with filmmaker expected after the screening.
Forget the guilt trip, the Green Film Festival of San Francisco, the mischievous, tree-hugging cousin of the 29 year old SF IndieFest, returns Oct 15-22 to prove that saving the planet doesn't have to feel like homework. We've ditched the doom-and-gloom documentaries that make you want to crawl under a (sustainably sourced) blanket and never come out. The line-up this year pairs sharp environmental storytelling with wit, weirdness, and unapologetic irreverence. And yes, our Eco-Horror midnight movie is back!
Whether you’re an eco-curious cinephile or a die-hard activist, come join in the fun because if we're going to talk about the end of the world as we know it, we might as well laugh, gasp, and maybe even dance a little on the way there. Through this experience the festival hopes audiences can begin to engage with sustainable solutions to the problems facing the planet.