2022 Films

Schedule of Events

August 11th
5:30 Social Hour BYOB
6:30 pm Light Side Up - Short Documentary Official Selection
7:00 pm Boneyard Alaska - Feature Documentary Winner
8:15 pm Talkback with creators of Boneyard Alaska
8:40 pm Opening Gala BYOB

August 12th
5:30 pm Social Hour BYOB
6:00 pm Pantanal - Student Film Winner
6:15 pm Yellowstone 88 - Animation Winner
6:25 pm Long Looking - Short Film Winner
6:35 pm Fighting Extinction After Dark - Documentary Short
7:00 pm Virtual Talkback with Fighting Extinction After Dark creator David Ozer
7:30 pm Breaking Trail - Documentary Short and Overall Winner
8:00 pm Closing Ceremony

Documentary Feature

Boneyard Alaska
Directed by: Paul Andrew Lawrence

Beneath the ever-frozen ground of Alaska, lie the bones of Ice Age features that roamed this region tens of thousands of years ago: bison, woolly mammoths, and prehistoric bears. Stored in a permafrost deep-freeze for all this time, these remains are in pristine condition and represent an unprecedented window into the life of the Pleistocene Epoch.

Granted: A Wish Story
Directed by: Dan Redfield

After a family receives a terminal diagnosis their world and their adventures come to a halt. With time more crucial than ever they’re given a unique opportunity to return to the place they love. Granting more than just one wish.

The Dark Hobby
Directed by: Paula Fouce

In Hawaii, a group of Native Hawaiians and conservationists struggles politically to protect the exotic fish being looted from the reefs. Turtles, whales, and dolphins are all protected, but not the fish. Now many verges on extinction. 28 million fish are in the aquarium trade pipeline at any given time. They undergo bladder piercing, fin cutting and starvation for shipment and reach the mainland dead or dying. They would have lived up to forty years on a reef. Fish species are in crisis worldwide and many are caught with cyanide and dynamite.

Return Sasyk to the Sea
Directed by: Andrea Odezynska

Bizarre Soviet irrigation experiments in Southern Ukraine, created a slow eco-disaster which continues today. Sasyk Estuary, by the Black Sea, is ground zero for a battle between eco activists vs. poachers, bureaucrats and corrupt officials.

No Perfect Walk
Directed by: Daniel Wilde & Justin Keller

If you were asked the question, "if you could do anything in the world what would it be?" Only a crazy person would say, I would walk every step of South America from the Southern tip to the Northern tip. Only a crazier person would willingly join them just so they could make a documentary about the journey.
This documentary is about two friends who drop everything in their lives, sell all their belongings and set out on a journey that would forever change their lives.

Epic Bill
Directed by: Quinnolyn Benson-Yates

A self-made millionaire turned destitute, Bill Bradley turned to the world of extreme endurance racing. Thirteen years later, he's completed a Quadruple Badwater and broken a world record for running rim to rim on the Grand Canyon seven times. Now about to turn 60, Bill returns for his ninth attempt at Arrowhead 135, one of the toughest cold-weather endurance races in the world, and for his second attempt at Aconcagua, the highest summit in the Western Hemisphere. As Bill pushes beyond his limits, he questions whether finishing these events defines his identity - or if he can discover a deeper reason for being out in the arena.

Documentary Short

Breaking Trail
Directed by: Jesse Roesler

Emily Ford sets out with Diggins, a borrowed Alaskan Husky sled dog, to become the first woman and person of color to thru-hike the 1,200-mile Ice Age Trail in winter. As the 69-day journey through subzero temperatures tests her physical and mental endurance, Emily and her canine protector develop an unbreakable bond as they embrace the unexpected kindness of strangers and discover they’ve become figureheads in the movement to make the outdoors more accessible for everyone. What begins as an extraordinary physical and mental challenge also becomes a spiritual adventure.

Mission Mountain
Directed by: Kody Kohlman & Andrew Bydlon

Raising cattle doesn’t usually rate as an earth-friendly practice. Amy O’Hoyt, a first-generation rancher, can confirm. So she bucked the standard way of producing beef to finish her cattle on the grass growing in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, rotating pastures, and proving there’s a way forward that’s connected with the earth, the animals, and, ultimately, a better future.

Light Side Up
Directed by: Nate Luebbe

Three adventurous filmmakers travel to the Alaskan Arctic in pursuit of a never-before-filmed sight: the aurora borealis from the edge of space. Doing something that's never been done means confronting hurdles, both known and unknown, head-on. Light Side Up is a raw, emotional story about pursuing an outlandish idea, and the failures that come with attempting to be the first.

Community for the Wild
Directed by: Christopher Spencer

Community for the Wild is a short documentary that follows a community of researchers and volunteers in British Columbia, Canada, who are working on the largest collaborative mule deer research project in BC's history - the Southern Interior Mule Deer Project. This research project has brought them together across vast landscapes guided by their common love of wildlife to support habitat conservation and wildlife management to try and assess why mule deer numbers are in steep decline and ultimately to come up with management recommendations to help improve their numbers.

Fighting Extinction After Dark
Directed by: David Ozier

When darkness falls on the Caribbean side of Belize, a small group of conservationists work to save a threatened species of crocodile. Fighting Extinction After Dark chronicles a single, high stakes croc rescue and release on a night full of unexpected challenges, curve balls and quick thinking. The dramatic, unfolding action on this single night illustrates many of the challenges facing both the crocodiles themselves and those fighting to save them.

Gonarezhou: Return of the Rhino
Directed by: Joanna Craig & Buck O'Donoghue

Gonarezhou National Park, Zimbabwe has twice lost its black rhino population due to human intervention. In 2021, black rhino returned to the wilds of Gonarezhou. This is a story about hope, about the relationship between people and wilderness and about evaluating the worth of a wild landscape. Through persistence, collaboration and belief, a much needed foothold is reclaimed for the critically endangered black rhino species - and a wild landscape endures.

From Great Water: Kvichak Fish Co.
Directed by: Andrew Bydlon

Native run salmon is as wild as the Alaskan rivers they swim. It stays that way because of a community that protects its waters and dedicates itself to the idea that a fish that feeds so many deserves respect. Amanda Wlaysewski, owner of Kvichak Fish Company, shows the quality and sustainability that are possible when individuals hold this focus all the way from the fishing vessels in the great waters of Bristol Bay, Alaska to your dinner plate.

Walking Two Worlds
Directed by: Maia Wikler

The mother-daughter duo, Jody Potts and Quannah Chasinghorse, two powerful Han Gwich’in women, represent the decades-long, intergenerational fight to protect the Arctic. The film follows Quannah pursue and achieve her dreams as an Indigenous super-model, breaking barriers of representation, while walking in two worlds: her Indigenous way of life and modern society. By showing the depths of Quannah and Jody’s profound relationship to one another and the land, grounded in culture and resilience, the film will inspire audiences to reflect on their relationships to community and what it means to have an unwavering sense of responsibility to protect the places we love.

Short Films

Long Looking
Directed by: Carrie Richer

A young woman perched in a lookout tower shifts between states of isolation and solitude. Inspired by historical records of Montana’s fire lookout towers, this portrait uses movement to explore time’s passage.

On the Edge
Directed by: Gilles Daubeuf

A pioneer woman finds herself alone on the road to the conquest of the West... Her husband tragically dead, she goes alone in unknown land in the hope of finding their last horse.

Animated Films

Yellowstone 88 - Song of Fire
Directed by: Jerry van de Beek & Betsy De Fries

In the summer of 1988 dry lightning sparked a fire in the parched and drought ridden landscape of Yellowstone Park, igniting a blaze that would scorch over 1.5 million perimeter acres of the park.

Student Films

Pantanal: A Charred Wetland
Directed by: Laura Pennafort

Located in the heart of Brazil, the Pantanal is a tropical wetland packed with the most remarkable wildlife. It has a global importance due to its characteristic water cycle and annual floods, which create waterlogged soils that function as a carbon sink. The annual floods are also essential to maintain a huge diversity of unique species. However, due to human actions, the floods are now becoming smaller and rivers are drying out, which is causing severe droughts. The consequences of this became evident in 2020, when huge wildfires destroyed over a quarter of this biome, killing millions of animals along the way. Two brave locals – Eduarda and Jorge – decided to give their all to rescue and save the lives of severely injured animals along the way.

Stop Pebble Mine
Directed by: Mason Mirabile

A short documentary about the Pebble Mine project in Bristol Bay Alaska with interviews from the World Wildlife Fund, United Tribes of Bristol Bay and Trout Unlimited.

Hold Your Applause
Directed by: Cole Clark

A short documentary about the most important musician of our time.

Curious by Nature
Directed by: Alicia Carter

The 2021 North Carolina State Science and Engineering Fair went virtual amid the COVID-19 Pandemic. With reduced access to school resources, 65% fewer students entered the competition. Despite these challenges, four students completed impactful research in the hopes of competing at the International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) and positively impacting their local community and environment.