SCOTLAND’S Environmental Film Festival has announced this year’s full programme, aiming to spotlight the vital role artists play in helping navigate climate change.
Running from September 12 - 14 at the state-of-the-art community-run Montrose Playhouse, the third annual festival, LandxSea, will showcase visual artists, musicians, poets, performers, and filmmakers around the theme of how artists respond to climate change.
The festival will open with the Scottish premiere of Lost For Words, a poetic journey across Britain’s landscapes and seasons focusing on reclaiming the vanished names of the wild and inspired by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris’s beloved book The Lost Words, and funded by Screen Scotland.
The film’s director, Hannah Papacek Harper, will attend the premiere, along with renowned Scottish nature writer and artist Amanda Thomson.
Other highlights across the three-day festival, curated by award-winning producer and festival director Rachel Caplan and festival co-founder Anthony Baxter, include the Scottish premiere of Tracing Light.
The documentary, which was backed by Screen Scotland, travels from Hebridean shores to German photon labs, pairing artists and physicists in a luminous exploration of light’s power to shape nature and fuel discovery.
Alongside the film screenings, The Rig creator David Macpherson will also be giving an insider’s look at class, climate, and screenwriting in Scotland’s oil industry.
“This year’s theme, Creative Ground, celebrates the vital role artists play in helping us navigate a changing climate.
“From Indigenous sci-fi to luminous orchestral film, the programme reflects our belief that imagination is essential for transformation,” said Caplan.
The Scottish premiere of Yanuni, a thrilling eco documentary produced by Leonardo DiCaprio, which follows Brazilian indigenous chief Juma Xipaia as she fights to protect the Amazon and the future of her unborn child, will also be shown on the closing night.
Montrose's Culture for Climate Scotland artist Eve Mosher will also lead a creative workshop where art, place, and community meet in response to coastal erosion and climate change.
Following its inaugural year at LandxSea, the festival’s annual juried North Light Award will shine a light on bold Scottish filmmaking that reimagines Scotland’s relationship with the natural world.
Chosen by an international jury including Daniesky Acosta, filmmaker, Katherine Bruce, executive director of Planet In Focus, Canada, and Karen Ridgewell, climate emergency and sustainability lead at Creative Scotland, the winning Scottish film from the festival will receive a £500 cash prize and be announced before the closing night.
“It’s incredible to see LandxSea grow into a national platform for environmental cinema, based right here in Montrose.
“We’re proud to bring stories that inspire change to audiences of all ages,” said Baxter.
