the effy 2026 agenda

Register for effy 2026 events at: https://luma.com/effy2026

Day one: Friday march 27

1-3 pm: location tba
a thriving future through film and fiction: effy x yale planetary solutions

The Environmental Film Festival at Yale (EFFY) and Yale Planetary Solutions will jointly present winning EFFY short films and Sci X Sci-Fi short stories. These selections bring together speculative, science-forward, and imaginative narratives that explore planetary futures, environmental science, and the role of storytelling in shaping how we understand and respond to global challenges. Following a mixed screening and reading, filmmakers and writers will be invited to join a moderated discussion with Sci X Sci-Fi Creatives-in-Residence Stephanie Barish and Tory Stephens to discuss the importance of telling climate stories through various media to reach broader audiences in climate conversations and inspire action.

​Showcased Films:
Liquid Spine, Great Marsh
Breaking Ground
The Forest in the Trees
The Soil and the Soul

7-10 PM: kroon hall, burke auditorium
EFFY Night One: Remembering Place in a Changing Climate

Place goes beyond physical presence; it contains memories, identities, and feelings of belonging. In Sound Guardians, Jakarta sinks and sea levels rise, Indonesia is moving its capital to Borneo. It’s building a futuristic new city named Nusantara in the middle of a forest, on the traditional land of the indigenous Balik people. Abidin, a Balik elder, is documenting his forest’s soundscape with the help of scientists to preserve ancestral knowledge – before it’s too late. On the other side of the planet, set on Tangier Island - a centuries-old Evangelical fishing community in Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay - Been Here Stay Here invites audiences to sit with the lived reality of a community facing the slow erosion of its land, not through spectacle or alarm, but through faith, memory, and daily life. Been Here Stay Here follows the residents who remain: fishermen, pastors, parents, children - bound by deep roots and spiritual language that often runs counter to mainstream environmental discourse. What does it mean to love a place that is slipping away? How might we begin to understand a community not in spite of their beliefs, but through them?

Schedule:

• ​Welcome Dinner (7-7:30 pm)

• ​Screenings (7:30-9:30 pm)

• ​Panel (9:30-10 pm)

DAY TWO: SATURDAY MARCH 28

12 PM: kroon hall, burke auditorium
SUSTAINABILITY IN FILM WORKSHOP

Please join us for a workshop on incorporating sustainability into filmmaking with leading professionals in the industry. More information TBA.

7 PM: kroon hall, burke auditorium
EFFY NIGHT two: birds and the people who love them

Join us in exploring the profound and intertwined bonds between humans and the birds they dedicate their lives to studying and supporting. In Love Birds, in 1972, married biologists George Hunt and Molly Warner made an unprecedented discovery while studying seagulls on one of California’s Channel Islands. To their surprise, a great number of the nesting pairs they observe are both female. George and Molly’s research on “lesiban seagulls” quickly triggers both outrage and jubilation in a nation grappling with the rise of the LGBTQ+ rights movement, and it threatens to tear apart their own relationship. Then, in Between Moon Tides, we travel to the other US coast to a ribbon of saltmarsh in coastal New England, an intergenerational group of citizen scientists is trying to save the Saltmarsh Sparrow from extinction, one nest at a time.

Schedule:

• Dinner (7-7:30 pm)​

• Screenings (7:30-8:15 pm)

• ​Panel (8:15-9 pm), moderated by Lindi von Mutius

9 PM: kroon hall, burke auditorium
EFFY GAla & awards

Join us to celebrate EFFY 2026 on the green carpet with awards, drinks, and food!