VISIONARY AND MOVING

Jakob Winkler’s lavishly researched and detail-drawn ‘hidden object book’ for both children and adults, “Fatima’s Fantastic Journey Through a World Without Oil” won the nomination for the Tyrol Change Award.For the Visions Award, Spanish directing duo Ana Sema and Paula Iglesias’ “They’re Just Fish”, which is set in the middle of the desert on a fish farm and is about adapting to a new, completely different environment, took home the prize.

Humming and threshing through the meadow, elephants and baboons of the volcano, dogs and scrap collectors in space, plastic and rescuers in the sea, survival strategies, childhood dreams, environmental scandals and beautiful, distant animal kingdoms and landscapes on your doorstep. With almost 60 films shown within 72 hours, there was something for everyone. Moving people internally with films, visions to touch you – this has been the credo of the Innsbruck Nature Film Festival, which has nestled itself into the International Nature Festival, for 19 years.

The entire festival represents getting involved. This can be truly unpleasant at times but also enlightening. Works such as the Soil Prize Winner “On Thin Ice” are frighteningly dramatic – a documentary about the rapidly dissolving permafrost in the Siberian Arctic and its consequences shows us truth and wonder. Or the science fiction nightmare “Dar(k)win Project”, winner of the Animated Short Film category, in which mutated underwater animals eat their favourite dish, plastic. So bluntly demonstrated on the big screen, some cinema-goers spooned down the images of the disastrous behaviour of humans towards nature before disappearing themselves, into the night…to digest and ruminate, while some sought out conversation in the foyer amongst other equally startled guests.