Bengaluru’s ALT EFF 2025 asked important questions on climate change

All Living Things Environmental Film Festival (ALT EFF)’s opening play successful Bengaluru was astir urgent conversations regarding the environment, and wherever those dialogues unfolded done the connection of cinema.

Audiences got a glimpse into sewage systems and landfills, star parks and wetlands, fungi and forests, people theatre and immersive experiences, often successful a azygous afternoon. For festival manager and co-founder, Kunal Khanna, an economist‑turned systems thinker and permaculturist, the extremity was clear: to bring unneurotic a scope of films that would supply a mode for radical to instrumentality action.

Human stories, the bosom of clime cinema

Across the assorted rooms astatine Bangalore International Centre (BIC) wherever the festival was held, the value of the situation ne'er felt distant; it showed up successful villages, cities, factories and forests. From stories specified arsenic Kentaro (Tilmann Stewart, Gaku Matsuda) and Future Council (Damon Gameau) making america spot the “future” done the eyes of children, to Marching successful the Dark (Kinshuk Surjan) pursuing women surviving with the fallout of husbandman suicides and organization neglect and The Dooars World (Shaon Pritam Baral) stepping into a fragile corridor wherever wildlife and radical coexist, the festival highlighted its halfway principles of change.

According to the squad down ALT EFF, the features they showcased were not conscionable astir the environment, but besides astir knowing the quality transportation to it.

“Big filmmakers are getting down biology narratives, and these stories are truthful strong, that the sub‑genre is astir the environment, and the main communicative is quality emotion,” says Laura Christe Khanna, who is besides co-founder and shaper of the festival.

The connection holds a delicate equilibrium betwixt ecological urgency and affectional immediacy, thing that is deliberate and not accidental. Even connected stage, performances specified arsenic Beware of Plastic Asura, astir a Yakshagana demon who embodies our integrative problem, pushed ideas of transformation, portion immersive creation experiences similar The Giants, transported audiences into the bosom of Australia’s past forests.

Homegrown clime connected the large screen

Though the festival covered experiences from each astir the world, its regard ne'er near location for excessively long. Documentaries specified arsenic Down the Drain, a watch’s travel done the city’s sewage system, and Waste and The City, a revisitation of Mavallipura aft years of protests and dumping, returned the absorption to Bengaluru’s streets, pipes and landfills.

Nitya Misra (Down the Drain) and Vishwesh Bhagirathi Shivaprasad with Karishma Rao (Waste and The City) recognition ALT EFF arsenic a level for audiences to instrumentality accountability arsenic good arsenic bring astir affirmative justice.

In the aforesaid spirit, Beneath The Panel: The Hidden Losses of India’s Solar Parks, directed by Aparna Ganesan, besides asked superior questions astir what happens to radical displaced successful the sanction of cleanable energy, and gave audiences a batch to deliberation about.

Talking astir the future, Kunal is optimistic that festivals similar ALT EFF with a decentralised nature, events hosted successful aggregate cities and a increasing web of ticker parties, volition spell a agelong mode successful sensitising radical to burning issues surrounding the planet.