Young Tunisian and Algerian filmmakers in global video contest on climate change
More than 800 videos by filmmakers from over 150 countries have been submitted to the Film4Climate competition on climate change. Young filmmakers from around the world, have been called to express their vision for a sustainable future by creating a short film or video about climate action. The best entry from the Middle East and North Africa region will receive a special prize, the MENA-Award. Launched by Connect4Climate, the idea has been to ask young people what climate change means in their lives since their futures will be the most affected by warming temperatures.
The videos offer a raw glimpse into the lives of young people everywhere—their cities, their communities, and the particular challenges they face. Submissions cover a range of cinematic styles, including stop-motion animation, music videos, and clever shorts. Rawe, for example, lives in a bustling city in Tunisia that struggles with its over-consumption of water. Another Tunisian author entitled his video Saving the trees...save the earth takes the form of a Public Service Advertisement sensitizing people not to cut down trees because they help mitigate climate change by removing carbon dioxide from the air, storing carbon and releasing oxygen into the atmosphere. In another short video from Algeria, water wastefully flows from hoses and faucets and water bottles. But in a twist, viewers find that all that water is actually going somewhere useful.
Winners will be chosen by a panel of climate change experts and professional filmmakers, including the former Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed and the Oscar-winning director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy. The President of the Jury is the Italian film maker Bernardo Bertolucci. The competition is the outcome of a partnership between the World Bank Group’s Connect4Climate program, the United Nations, Vulcan Productions, and the Italian energy company Enel. Other partnerssupporting the initiative include the UNFCCC, UN Sustainable Development, UNEP, The Global Brain, and the Government of the Kingdom of Morocco.