The third annual Wild and Working Lands Film Festival, hosted by the Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Wyoming, will be held in Laramie, Wyoming and online in March 2024. The festival explores the intricate connections between humans and the landscapes where we dwell, work, and play.

We are especially interested in films that inspire audiences to better understand our current world and work toward a future where people and natural environments prosper together by:
- Communicating innovative research,
- Highlighting ground-breaking solutions,
- Arguing for paradigm shifts in our framing of environmental issues,
- Presenting portraits of people, places, and relationships between them,
- Raising awareness of emerging issues, or
- Sharing indigenous and local ways of knowing.

We value diversity, justice, creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, sound information, and real-world solutions. From our home at the University of Wyoming, we embrace films set in our surrounding ecoregion—including wild, rural, and urban areas of the Great Plains, Rocky Mountains, and high desert sagebrush steppe—as well as stories from afar that can inform our experience in the American West.

We invite submissions of short films (max 20 min) to show in our local theater during the festival and online in the weeks following the festival. All submissions will be considered for awards.

We also request that filmmakers allow us to show accepted films during limited community screenings of the festival across Wyoming. These are not-for-profit screenings that may include small ticket fees to cover the costs of the screening. The purpose is to fulfill our role as a land grant university by reaching constituents throughout Wyoming and to advance the festival mission of "inspiring audiences to better understand our current world and work toward a future where people and natural environments prosper together."

Grand Prize (selected by festival judges)
People’s Choice (selected by audience vote at end of festival)
Best Film by an Indigenous Director or Showcasing an Indigenous Worldview
Best Film About Wyoming

• We will consider films up to 20 minutes in length for the festival.
• The submitter must have permission (licenses) to use any non-original audio (i.e., music) or video content. Films should be made up of mostly (>90%) original video content.
• Film submissions must not promote a specific product or brand. We are more interested in documentary storytelling than marketing.
• Film submissions must be based on accurate information and should not encourage biased or misleading ideas or viewpoints.
• We reserve the right to use portions of your film and your still images for future festival outreach activities.
• We request permission to make accepted films available online for two weeks following the in-person festival. For films that are otherwise freely available online, we request permission to make them available via the festival website long-term.
• Non-English films must include subtitles.

Overall Rating
Quality
Value
Communication
Hospitality
Networking