mobile film festival logo

Mobile Movie Magic

Submissions came in from across the world for the 11th Mobile Film Festival at COP21

With the anticipation for this year’s biggest climate change negotiations rising, people are finding new ways to be involved with COP21. The 11th edition of the Mobile Film Festival, an official event of this year’s COP21, was an opportunity for anyone with a smartphone to have their say on climate change and a chance to win a grand prize of 30,000‎€ by a jury led by Academy Award nominated filmmaker Fernando Meirelles.

With the anticipation for this year’s biggest climate change negotiations rising, people are finding new ways to be involved with COP21. The 11th edition of the Mobile Film Festival, an official event of this year’s COP21, was an opportunity for anyone with a smartphone to have their say on climate change and a chance to win a grand prize of 30,000‎€ by a jury led by Academy Award nominated filmmaker Fernando Meirelles.

The rules remained the same: one mobile, one minute, one movie. The films had to involve topics of climate change to relate to COP21. On December 7 awards will be handed out in Paris as part of the COP21! Until November 30, 2015, people from around the world can vote for their favorite film on their website.

Bruno Smadja, the festival’s creator, said that the partnership with the United Nations for COP21 “provides greater value and meaning to the festival.” Through this he said the festival will be giving “a chance to young filmmakers to participate in the most important conference on climate change,” a subject he says “directly affects their generation.”

With 765 submissions from 70 different countries, 75 films were chosen with filmmakers from 27 different countries. These short films were not meant to be expensive or time consuming. Organizers aimed to create a festival “where talent, creativity and hard work would count more than budget and industry connections.”

Participants were asked to create movies that would “amaze, inspire and move” spectators. These simple yet thought-provoking films show viewers what climate change means to someone on the other side of the world. Some of their comic and horrific tales of the future force viewers to reconsider daily actives that contribute to climate change.

View all submissions here.  

Naomi Roy is an artist and a fourth year Planning student at the University of Waterloo.