The festival is intended to be a showcase of science-driven, climate-focused films promoting global awareness of the many facets of our changing climate, present solutions, and to promote positive change.
Submission Details:
Films must be 1 to 3 minutes in length.
Can be shot on a cellphone.
Open to currently enrolled students and alumni
from NYU and UArctic
Open to all genres, including documentary and experimental.
Winning entries from 2023, 2024 and 2025 are available as examples.
Dates:
Naomi Oreskes, guest speaker April 20
(Time and location to be announced).
Poster presentations (Time and location to be announced).
Film submissions open April 1, 9 A.M. and close 5 P.M. April 15th (EST). Festival and Screenings: April 22, 2026
Location: Eisner & Lubin Auditorium, 4th Floor
NYU Kimmel Center for University Life, 60 Washington Square South, NYC, NY – This event will be livestreamed and a recording will be available.
THIRD ANNUAL NYU CLIMATE CHANGE FILM FESTIVAL AWARDEES:
FIRST PLACE
ZEFU CHEN
A DIAMOND THAT CUTS THROUGH ILLUSION
The Alchemy of Saving the Planet
An experimental travelogue coalescing contemporary spiritual malaise with climate anxiety, “A Diamond That Cuts Through Illusions” is filmed entirely on expired Super 8mm and 16mm film in the Elysian villages at the foot of the mythical Namchabarwa Peak in Eastern Tibet. The manifesto film traces its genesis in the revered Diamond Sutra, diagnosing the illusory solastagia (the grief from one experiencing an environmental crisis) of our time with ancient Buddhist wisdom. As the film’s author wander through the diamantine landscape in search of a ecological nirvana, the melancholic decay of the expired celluloid metaphorically paints by the frame a paradisiacal world besieged by Anthropocene destruction. The camera becomes a prophetic whisperer of our planet’s stoic threnody, transmitting its mighty powers and beauty with existential awe. Through this short cinepoem, the author experiments with his aesthetic and social theory of symbio-poeisis, which posits that the ecstasis of posthumanist freedom, the end goal of all sublimated art, will be at the instant of the full integration of man into Earth.
Camera used:
Beaulieu 4008 Super 8mm Camera, Beaulieu R16 16mm Camera,
Gear used:
Expired Kodak Negative Color Film, B&W Film, Super 8mm, 16mm
Editing Software: Premiere Pro
ZEFU (b. 2003, Canton) is a filmmaker, poet, and transdisciplinary artist based in New York working across all avant-garde media. Incubator of the meta-poiesis of a transhuman self, his mytho-autobiographical work aims to induce the state of ecstatis through generative enstatis. Adhering to the etymology of “poetry” as “to make, to create,” his often scientific-fantastical worlds are deeply informed by studies of antiquity, esotericism, existentialism, and posthumanist theory, while remaining faithful to his artistic roots in surrealism and mysticism. Centering his artistic nucleus in the power of the ancient poet equipped with modern technologies, his immaterial narratives aim to delineate an individual portal to a collective higher consciousness unbounded by historical spacetime.
Zefu’s motto is that life is greater than art. He is currently completing his BFA at New York University in avant-garde cinema with a concentration in philosophy. His next major project, SØMÄLGEBRA (the body’s algebra) is in the pre-production stage. The film will explore humanity’s future potentiality in transcending beyond the physical-temporal plane through the Ancient Greek myth of Narcissus retold with the knowledge of 20-century quantum mechanics. He is looking forward to collaborating with scientists, artists, and producers on the exciting project.
Oh, that’s sad.’ ‘Oh, that sucks.’ ‘Well, what can you do?’
These are all phrases we’ve heard, maybe even said, when faced with devastating information about climate change. But brushing it off or feeling inconsequential only validates the small, everyday ways we unknowingly hurt the planet. This normalizes the damage we cause without even realizing it.
But if small actions can hurt the planet, it can help it too and it starts with the recognition of those “small” things.
Software: Procreate, Premiere Pro
Alissa Hsu is a director, producer and editor. She is a CAS student studying Computer Science with a minor in Web Development. She is passionate about the intersection of art and technology, constantly creating in different creative tech mediums. She loves New York, her family and friends, and her dear bunny (in no particular order).
Portfolio (to see list of projects, click “project list” on top left corner in “tech + art” section): Github| Instagram| LinkedIn |
The Children Were Taken from the Land, Now the Land is Being Taken from the Children by Eriel Lugt and Carmen Kuptana
Carmen Kuptana and Eriel Lugt are Inuvialuit filmmakers from Tuktoyaktuk, NT, whose work centers on climate change, cultural resilience, and youth perspectives in the Arctic. Their debut film premiered at the Skábmagovat Indigenous Film Festival, and they’re now developing a new project that deepens their exploration of land, identity, and environmental justice.
You can read more about their journey and current work here: Arctic Focus
Eriel Lugt
Carmen Kuptana
The Land production still
The Land production still
THIRD PLACE
Modern Man
by Eliot Cho and Jinsung Park
Camera used: Sony a7R V Editing Software: Premiere ProThis film was co-directed by Eliot Cho and Jinsung Park.Eliot Cho is a director and cinematographer, and he is studying film and television at Tisch. Jinsung Park is a director and writer, and he is studying dramatic writing at Tisch.This is Eliot and Jinsung’s third project together, but their first time co-directing with each other.
Return to Sender by Kiran Arain
Plastic Trees by Evan Pan
HONORABLE MENTION:
STRATA by Tudor Ric Postolache
To escape a toxic surface, the remnants of humanity ascend within a flying mega-strucuture, but time continues to run out.
Strata by Tudor Ric Postolache
STRATA is an sci-fi animated short film exploring an apocalyptic future brought to a final brink.
Created with Photoshop, Toon Boom Harmony, Blender
Tudor Ric Postolache is an acting graduate from Tisch Drama and multidisciplinary artist who pursues storytelling as a path to a more empathetic world. He created STRATA while taking Intro To Animation at the Kambar Film Institute and continues its development as an ongoing project. With its world-building he aims to highlight how the structures we inhabit must be reckoned with if any lasting and meaningful change can be achieved.
Thwaites Glacier, often referred to as “the doomsday glacier”, is melting faster and faster every year. What that means for us and our planet lies in the ice, with ground-breaking technology helping to decode what the future of Thwaites looks like.
Software: Premiere Pro, After Effects. Illustrator.
Special Thanks to Prof. David Holland, narration
Aleka Agre is a Motion Designer and Illustrator. She’s a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and is currently working full-time as the Lead Animator at Mess Kit Inc.
A collage of archival and original footage, When the Fire Dies tells the story of humanity’s rise and fall.
Camera used: Cannon EOS R5 C
Editing Software: Premiere Pro
Noah Lazar Abraham is an 18 year old artist and storyteller studying Film & Television at New York University. He is an alumni of the LaGuardia High School, the school that inspired the show Fame. There he specialized in technical theater with a focus on costumes and puppetry.
We Don’t Decompose.
Video by Julia Andrade Rozario
A short musical stop motion animation about sustainable solutions that could be applied to disposing of art materials such as acrylic paint and markers that typically end up in landfills.
Created on Stop Motion Studio
Editing Software: Premiere Pro
ABOUT JULIA:
Julia is currently studying Cinema Studies and Urban Design and Architecture at Tisch School of The Arts. She is dedicated to filmmaking, production design and visual collage projects that represent Brazilian stories, intersectional womanhood, the feeling of double-conciousness in immigration as a third culture kid and sustainability. She is passionate about capturing stories through materials, textures, patterns, and powerful imagery onscreen. This film was an experimentation, in collaboration with the talented Akira Sky, that brought music, collage and stop motion together.
A short musical stop motion animation about sustainable solutions that could be applied to disposing of art materials such as acrylic paint and markers that typically end up in landfills.
Mixing Software: Ableton
ABOUT AKIRA:
Akira Sky is a versatile composer and artist whose work spans film, pop, and musical theater. She crafts emotionally resonant songs that reflect her ongoing interest in how music can deepen storytelling across mediums. Whether collaborating on visual narratives or writing for live performance, Akira is always exploring new ways for her music to come alive on screen.
From his landmark 1988 testimony before the U.S. Congress to subsequent appearances in courtrooms and international venues, Dr. Hansen has championed policies such as carbon fees and dividends to spur meaningful emission cuts. He identified 350 parts per million of atmospheric CO₂ as a threshold for climate stability—a focal point for 350.org—and continued tracking temperature anomalies, revealing our planet’s rapid warming through detailed analyses of El Niño events and other climatic phenomena. Departing from NASA in 2013 allowed him to focus more intensively on climate advocacy, culminating in legal efforts to highlight government responsibility for safeguarding our atmosphere. In addition to being recognized by Time magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential People, Foreign Policy magazine named Dr. Hansen as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers.
Dr. Hansen has consistently shared the truth about climate change — a truth validated by the mounting climate disasters we see today. While he acknowledges that our collective political and social responses remain dangerously inadequate, he remains optimistic. That optimism is born of his believe that young people, especially college age young adults, have the potential to drive the political change that is essential to achieve the actions that are needed to alter the course that we, the United States and the world, are on — and achieve a bright future for young people and all life on our planet. That is the topic he wants to discuss with you.
If you are an NYU or UArctic admin, alum, faculty, or student and are interested in volunteering to work on the website or participate in judging, get in touch!
• Three seconds of black before your film program begins. • Each title card with a single entry (e.g., directed by John Muir) should be three seconds long.
• Title cards with multiple entries should be held long enough to read all the text. • Three seconds of black after the credits.
Submission Details:
Eisner & Lubin Auditorium, 4th Floor
Winning Films Will Also Be Screened At:
Click here to learn more.
Oh, that’s sad.’ ‘Oh, that sucks.’ ‘Well, what can you do?’
