Earth Connection Film Festival

The Earth Connection Film Festival supports filmmakers to create new solutions to address the climate crisis through storytelling. The festival awards $12,000 in screening fees and $5250 in prizes to the winning films.

This short film contest blends science and the arts, unleashing the power of storytelling to help channel our ideas of climate change to a more actionable, empowering space. Research has shown that many adults tend to frame climate change as a distant phenomenon, an ineffective framework for action. Areas such as ethics, morality and spirituality have shown much greater promise for encouraging climate action and appealing to broad swaths of society.

We are seeking multimedia submissions related to the ethics, morality and spirituality of the climate crisis. The guiding questions are drawn from cutting-edge social scientific research and reflect the general consciousness of adults across a broad swath of identities. The climate crisis relies on many people offering their diverse talents and skills to bring solutions to the table.

The arts play a critical role. Please help us build action and hope by offering your submission and unique art.

The 2024 inaugural festival, funded by the National Science Foundation, took placed at the historic Buskirk-Chumley Theater. $14,000 was awarded to an international body of filmmakers. The 2026 festival will take place at the IU Cinema—a world-renown arthouse theater located on the Indiana University campus—as part of IU Cinema’s Creative Collaborations program.