Winning Films 
 

Best in Festival    Queen of Trees 

One of the most extraordinary stories in the natural world, this remarkable film exposes the inter-locking and codependent world of insects, birds and animals within an African fig tree. The fig tree and the fig wasp differ in size a billion times over, yet the minute fig wasp, as the tree's only pollinator, is vital to the survival of the tree. The two are locked in an amazing and intricate relationship from which neither can escape, but which benefits both and supports animals as varied as ants and elephants. Both are miracles: the process and the film, which uses state-of-the-art macro photography allowing viewers rare insight into the natural world. The husband-wife team of filmmakers spent two years making the film in Africa.  52 minutes. 

Directors/Producers:  Mark Deeble and Victoria Stone 
 

Best Feature Length    Favela Rising 

This is a stunning film - emotionally charged, culturally fascinating and socially inspiring. FAVELA RISING documents a man and a movement, a city divided and a favela (Brazilian squatter settlement) united. Haunted by the murders of his family and many of his friends, Anderson Sá is a former drug-trafficker who turns social revolutionary in Rio de Janeiro’s most feared slum. Through hip-hop music, the rhythms of the street, and Afro-Brazilian dance he rallies his community to counteract the violent oppression enforced by teenage drug armies and sustained by corrupt police. 80 minutes. 

Director/Producers:  Jeff Zimbalist and Matt Mochary 
 

Special Jury Award    Chimpanzees: An Unnatural History 

This film is a poignant and heart breaking journey into the world of the chimp and the atrocities that have been committed against them in the name of research.  In 1959, the United States Air Force captured dozens of baby chimpanzees in Africa, transporting them to Alamogordo, New Mexico, where they and their offspring were to endure a grueling life as the ultimate human stand-ins. From experiments in space travel and high-velocity crash tests, to pharmaceutical testing and hepatitis and AIDS research, to roles on the silver and small screens, these original Air Force chimpanzees and others that followed gave their lives to benefit humankind - and now a few extraordinary people are working to give those lives back. 57 minutes. 

Director/Producer: Allison Argo 
 

Special Jury Award   The Dolphin Defender 

The story of dolphins – their intelligence, their emotional connectedness, their sense of community is told here in this stunning film.  It is a memorable voyage into their world, revealed with the energy and elegance of the dolphins themselves.  Hardy Jones has also turned his camera into a tool for conservation. The film reveals horrific dolphin killings--documentary footage which made headlines and sparked international protests. Jones also discovered the effects of chemical pollution on dolphins and orcas, the largest species of dolphin. He came to realize that threats to these marine mammals were threats to the ocean itself, and to us all. 57 minutes. 

Producer & Writer: Hardy Jones 
 

Best in People & Culture    Queen of the Mountain 

Theresa Goell started her career as an archaeologist in the early part of the 20th century with four strikes against her: female, divorced, Jewish and nearly deaf.  But with unshakeable determination, Goell pursued her passion at Nemrud Dagh, an isolated mountaintop in Southwestern Turkey that had been shrouded in mystery until Goell’s pioneering excavations. After living most of her life as an outsider, Goell became “queen of the mountain,” gaining worldwide attention for her work and finding a new home among the Kurdish community.  This is a tender film that offers an intriguing portrait of an eccentric spirit and a true American original. 57 minutes. 

Writer & Director: Martha Lubell 
 

Best in Adventure      Sharks at Risk

Best in Conservation & Environment 

The son of legendary oceanography Jacques Cousteau, Jean-Michel takes us on an extraordinary expedition to French Polynesia and South Africa to study the intriguing world of the shark and along the way encounters the effects of the growing appetite for shark consumption.  In Asia, sharks are stripped of their fins (the valuable body part) while the rest of their bodies are thrown back into the sea. It is an unprecedented slaughter, and the ultimate effects may well be catastrophic -- not just for sharks, but for the entire sea.  The film also examines sharks mating rituals.  In the aggressive ritual of gray sharks, the males bite the females in order to subdue them. Females have developed thicker skin over time as protection from this brutal ritual.

53 minutes 

Director: Jean-Michel Cousteau 
 

Best in Scientific Exploration    Volcanoes of the Deep Sea 

This film explores the astonishing sights that lie 12,000 feet below the surface of the earth.  It delivers a real life tale of mystery as scientist search for an animal that may be one of Earth’s greatest survivors.  In pursuit of this elusive creature, a team enters a submersible and invites you deep down with them into the hostile, alien world that lies beneath. 44 minutes. 

Director: Stephen Low

Executive Producer: James Cameron

Producer(s): Pietro Serapiglia and Alexander Low 
 

Best Short Film    LongFin 

This fascinating and mystical film throws a spotlight on the little-known life of an endemic New Zealand long finned eel and takes you on an epic journey through the life of this intriguing creature.  Guided guided by instinct alone, the eel must find its way from the open ocean to the rivers in order to breed.  On this, often century-long journey, the eel will face a changing land, and dangers that its ancestors would have never encountered.  24 minutes. 

Writer & Director: Lindsay Davidson & Melissa Salpietra

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