GREEN HORIZONS AWARD

Belgium 2022, 56 min, colour, Director: Nic Balthazar

The multinational oil and gas company Shell lost a climate protection case in court in the Netherlands in 2021 against several environmental protection organisations and citizens and, according to the ruling, must reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 45 percent by 2030. The lawsuit was represented by lawyer Roger Cox, who had already successfully sued the Netherlands in 2015 for compliance with its climate protection obligations. DUTY OF CARE gives an insight into the life and work of Cox and shows that it is possible to stop environmentally harmful governance and ruthless profiteering by taking legal action.

Biography Director: Nic Balthazar is a Belgian filmmaker, television reporter, presenter and writer. His debut film BEN X, an adaptation of his own book, was screened at the 22nd BIFF and won several international awards.

JURY STATEMENT

We would first like to give an honourable mention - for a touching, sometimes unsparing, always stubborn documentary that shows two sisters in their struggle against factory farming and negotiates the fundamental question of how ecological goals can be enforced with parliamentary politics, but also with activism and civil disobedience: JUST ANIMALS by Vesa Kuosmanen & Saila Kivelä. 

Winning film: DUTY OF CARE - THE CLIMATE TRIALS by Nic Balthazar

For the Green Horizons Award, the jury chose a documentary in which the actions of individuals show tangible and far-reaching results. Because we can no longer wait for promises, but need action that leads to effective change. 

In 55 minutes, the winning film takes viewers on a journey through the course of a highly exciting legal dispute involving one of the world's largest oil companies. It is the story of the first lawyer to successfully sue a government and an oil giant. His motivation and perseverance have inspired many other people to take legal action against governments and companies that are doing too little about the climate crisis. The film inspires people to take action themselves and shows that various democratic steps, no matter how utopian they may seem, can indeed have an impact.

The Green Horizons Award 2022 goes to DUTY OF CARE - THE CLIMATE TRIALS by Nic Balthazar.

Natalie Lettenewitsch

Research assistant at the Seminar for Film Studies at the Free University of Berlin, research work on nature documentary film and other topics. Previously programme work, editorial and organisational activities at various film institutions and festivals.

María Vallecillos Soldado

Graduated with a Master's degree in Cultural Studies and Cultural Management from the PH Ludwigsburg in 2022. After many years of experience as festival coordinator at the Tübingen film festival CINELATINO, she focused her Master's thesis on the film festival landscape in Baden-Württemberg. This led to the Ludwigsburg film festival NaturVision, where she is now responsible for the film competition. Films, sustainability and educational work are thus not only among her personal interests, but also part of her everyday professional life.

Prof. Dr. Ing. Klaus Fricke

Klaus Fricke studied geology-palaeontology at the Georg-August University of Göttingen and then completed a one-year supplementary course in environmental protection at the University of Kassel. Here he found his way into waste and resource management. In 1999 he was appointed to the TU Braunschweig. There he is head of the Chair of Waste and Resource Management. As Dean of Studies at the Pontificia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, he has been responsible for the international Master's programme "Sustainable Settlement and Infrastructure Planning in Urban Areas" since 2008. Since 2004, Klaus Fricke has been the editorial director and publisher of the journal "Müll und Abfall". In addition to his higher-level editorial work, he is responsible for the topic area "international waste management". He is a member of the board of trustees of the Öko-Institut e. V.

JOURNEY TO UTOPIA is the winner of the 2021 Green Horizon Award.

Mother, father and three children live in a postcard idyll in the Norwegian countryside. But the parents are seriously concerned about the state the current generation will leave the world in for their children. Together as a family, they decide to throw their lives overboard and make a fresh start in an eco-village that is just being built in Denmark. Documentary filmmaker Erlend E. Mo has succeeded in making a refreshing, thoughtful and at the same time cheerful documentary in which he follows his own family up close with all the ups and downs in the major project of their lives.

Biography Director:Norwegian filmmaker Erlend E. Mo studied literature, Scandinavian languages, and film and television. His documentaries are mainly about people and society. The director passed away in 2021 at the age of 54.

JURY-STATEMENT

The film we would like to award tonight does not offer answers to individual ecologically pressing problems, as the name of the prize - Green Horizons - might suggest. Instead, we experience - at times shockingly unembellished - the everyday life of a family setting out from the tranquil, well-off mountains of Norway to find a more environmentally sustainable future in a living community in the Danish countryside. But it proves much easier to have the right opinion than to live it out. Erlend E. Mo, the filmmaker and father portrays with incredible closeness and empathy his family in which idealism and reality, individual freedom and responsibility towards the community collide. The result is a sensitive and at the same time courageous film, which in many moments directs the gaze to the unspoken and the not so easily recognizable, thus taking us again and again into everyday situations to which we can connect. We had a long and controversial discussion about this film in the jury: Because so many decisions are made, some of them ecologically questionable. And because it offers no clear answer to the question of how and where we can find this more environmentally friendly, more sustainable future. From our point of view, this makes the documentary JOURNEY TO UTOPIA a very special one: A film that has the power to spark a discussion among the audience and talk about this family that thinks it has understood that we have to act - all of us - that we have to break away from the old familiar and look for new ways. After the decision, the festival management informed us that Erlend E. Mo, passed away earlier this year. We do not know under what circumstances, but it is not decisive for the awarding of this prize. This award would certainly have pleased him as a courageous, clever filmmaker.

Hauke Wendler

Writer / Director / Producer on the cinema documentary MONOBLOC. Hauke Wendler is a German journalist, documentary filmmaker and producer who lives with his family in Hamburg.

Holger Herlitschke

Architect, worked in his own architectural practice for approx. 25 years. Member of the Green Party for almost 20 years. Has worked in the city's environmental department since 2020.

Nadja Varsani

She has been with fechnerMEDIA since 2014, since March 2016 in the editorial department, where she realises image films and documentaries.

The Green Horizons Award 2020 for the best documentary with an ecological theme has been awarded to NUCLEAR FOREVER, directed by Carsten Rau.

The jury commended this beautifully shot and edited film for the calm and objective way in which it discusses the difficult issues that continue to arise out of the contrasting nuclear energy policies of Germany and France. Access to several of the major sites involved, in both countries, allows us to sample a variety of expert viewpoints – technical, economic and political – concerning the respective advantages and disadvantages of either national system. In bringing forward a series of strong voices at plant and community level, in an open-minded way, the film invites the audience to come to its own conclusions on a vital and complex issue of our time.

Special mention goes to another film in the competition, THE STORY OF PLASTIC, directed by Deia Schlosberg, for its ‘elegance, lucidity and overall power of argument.’

Hische/Skowron

Antje Hubert

Roland Makulla