Climate Change to schedule nine titles competing for the Green Spike for the film with most outstanding environmental values at the 66th Seminci

• The fest section is supported by the  Valladolid City Council, Greenpeace, the National Film Association (AEC), Ecologists in Action, the Canary Islands International Environmental Film Festival (FICMEC) and Aquavall.

The 66th edition of  Seminci will  hold on to  its commitment to raise the film lovers’ awareness of  environmental issues with a new release of its section on  Climate Change, whose aim is  to make  audiences  more mindful of the need to protect the planet from this threat.  Implemented  since the 61st edition, the initiative has the support of the Valladolid City Council, Greenpeace, the National  Film Association (AEC), Ecologists in Action and  the Canary Islands International Environmental Film Festival (FICMEC), as well as the collaboration of Aquavall.

For the fourth consecutive year, the festival includes in its award list  a prize  for a film with strong  environmental values.  Nine titles are eligible for this award in the upcoming edition of the Valladolid Festival:  seven documentary feature films, three of them Spanish productions, and two fiction short films.

The international feature lengths  eligible for the Green Spike are Animal (Cyril Dion, France), a documentary that entered  the Official Selection of this year’s  Cannes Film Festival and stars Bella and Vipulan, two 16-year-old adolescents who undertake an extraordinary journey in the course of which they will understand that we are deeply connected  to other species; How to Kill a Cloud (Tuija Halttunen, Finland / Denmark), which describes the moral dilemma of scientist Hannele Korhonen upon earning a €1.5 million research  grant to participate in an ambitious project that seeks to stimulate rainfall over an area of the United Arab Emirates; I’m So Sorry (Zhao Liang, Hong Kong / France / Netherlands), which reflects on the nuclear question and describes the historical events and the current  nuclear disaster that affects the whole of human society; and Living Water (Pavel Borecký, Czech Republic / Switzerland / Jordan), which reports on  the confrontation between the state of Jordan, agricultural firms  and the indigenous communities of Wadi Rum over the last abundant source of drinking water there.

The three Spanish documentaries in the Climate Change section are De Quijotes y semillas (Patxi Uriz, Jordi Matas), a road movie showing  the journey of chef Santi Cordón and the Malaga permaculturer Alberto Marín  on the chef’s ‘vegycle’ —they travel all the way  from the latter’s  home town of Tudela to the Málaga Film Festival in order to present  a  documentary about the last vegetable gardeners  of Navarre; and two entries in the DOC. España section: Posidonia (Adán Aliaga), which discloses the secrets of posidonia, the longest living being on the planet, on the island of Tabarca,  and El vent que ens mou (Pere Puigbert), which  follows in the footsteps of Remei, an old woman who has lived her entire life in a village in northern  Catalonia, where she devoted herself  mainly to her family.

The two short films competing for the Green Spike are Aska (Clara Milo, Iceland / Canada), also eligible for  the Golden Spike in the Official Section: the story of two young sisters who must race against nature’s decay  in their quest to reach a volcano;  and Naya (Sebastian Mulder / Netherlands), a documentary short also  programed in Time of History which  follows  a wolf that is being monitored with a GPS device on its way from East Germany to Belgium.

The Green Spike  jury is formed by David Baute, the director of Climate Exodus (the Green Spike-winner at the 65th Seminci)  as well as artistic director of the Miradas-Doc Documentary Film Festival and the director of the Canary Islands’ International Environmental Film Festival  (FICMEC); Miguel López Cabanas, doctor in Psychology, expert in Social Administration  and current Secretary of the Board of Directors of Greenpeace Spain;  and Sandra Sutherland, journalist, TV host and newscaster  and teacher who has worked at RTVE since 1981, where she directed and presented the TV programme Agrosfera.