Hollywood Climate Summit and Jackson Wild have set finalists for their first joint awards ceremony Nov. 10 in Los Angeles spanning narrative film & TV from Train Dreams and Hacks, to unscripted and documentary This is a Gardening Show and Nuisance Bear.
Selected from over 500 global submissions, finalists represent “the most impactful, innovative, and inspiring storytelling,” the groups said.
Projects span the past two years. The joint awards will likely run every other year to ensure sufficient environmental narrative content.
HCS is the host of an increasingly popular annual summit in LA and provides a year-round community connecting entertainment professionals with climate experts. Jackson Wild, based in Jackson, Wyoming, has been a global leader in nature and conservation media for over 30 years and hosted its own annual awards. The organizations joined forces on the awards earlier this year, expanding Jackson Wild’s mostly documentary and social content to narrative features and television, podcasts, games, digital media and comedy.
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“In this time of increasing environmental urgency, we must amplify and support the creatives finding new depths in climate and nature storytelling, and expand our thinking as an industry on what that storytelling can look like. This partnership expands that genre-bending creative spectrum, connects the communities making it happen, and puts a shared vision of a better world at the center,” said Heather Fipps, Executive Director of Hollywood Climate Summit.
“This year’s finalists invite audiences into the natural world through film, games, podcasts, and so much more, each one a testament to the extraordinary quality of storytelling happening right now,” said Christie Quinn, Executive Director of Jackson Wild. “Reaching people across genres and formats has never been more vital to the future of our planet, and celebrating the best of today’s storytelling is how we inspire what comes next.”
Finalists
NARRATIVE FEATURE
Bugonia —Element Pictures / Square Peg / CJ Enm Production in association with Pith and Fruit Tree Enterprises, Focus Features
Remarkably Bright Creatures — Night Owl Stories, Netflix
The Wild Robot — DreamWorks Animation, Universal Pictures
Train Dreams — Black Bear Pictures, Kamala Films, Netflix
Twisters — Amblin Entertainment, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures
NARRATIVE SHORT
Heat Me — ABCinema, in co-production with Orama Productions.
MotherEarth Inc. — Co-directed by Heather Mingo and Isabel Siragusa
Two Breaths — A film by Kateryna Kurganska
Wowsabout — The Jim Henson Company, in association with PBS
TV SERIES – SCRIPTED DRAMA
Families Like Ours — Netflix (Denmark)
Lead Children — Netflix (Poland)
Radioactive Emergency — Netflix
The Last of Us — HBO Max
TV SERIES – SCRIPTED COMEDY
Four Seasons — Universal Television, Netflix
Hacks — Universal Television in association with Paulilu, First Thought Productions, Fremulon Productions, 3 Arts Entertainment
North of North — Netflix
Rage — Producciones Mandarina for HBO Max
TV SERIES – UNSCRIPTED
Building Outside the Lines — Painless TV, Magnolia Network
Réabhlóid Ar Chul An Tí / F* the Lawn— New Decade Films, Pier to Pier Media, SEETREE GmbH
The Wild Ones — Offspring Films, AppleTV+
This is a Gardening Show — Radical Media, Netflix
VIDEO GAME
Flock Around — Secret Plan Games
The Guardian of Nature — Inlusio Interactive
Planet Pigeon — Cracked Cubes and Thirteen Productions LLC, Minecraft EDU
Two Falls (Nishu Takuatshina) — Unreliable Narrators
COMEDY SPECIAL
Climate Science Translated — Houseband, Beyond The Deck, Utopia Bureau, Climate Science Breakthrough
Funeral for a Glacier — Day Two Productions, Green Olive Creative
Green Goddesses Take New York — UnchainedTV, CaveLight Films
Slick Burn — Petty Victories
DIGITAL SERIES
Climate Town — Climate Town Productions
Do You Even Care? — Yellow Dot Studios
Slick — Carmack Productions
Study Hall Sustainability — Complexly, Arizona State University
The Firepit — United By Nature (powered by Nature Is Nonpartisan), Shelton Films
PODCAST
The Climate Denier’s Playbook — 400 Parts Per Million LLC
Sabotage — Good Luck Media, Yellow Dot Studios
The Last City — Wondery
Threshold — Aurice Productions
JACKSON WILD FINALISTS BY CATEGORY
FEATURE
Checkpoint Zoo — Ghost Robot, Appian Way, Noah Media Group, After Hours, Abramorama
Derek vs Derek — The Slate Works and Damer Films
Nuisance Bear — MUBI, A24
We, The Hated — A Firebreak Films production in association with Passion Planet, BFI/Doc Society, Bertha Foundation, Distributed by Propagate
LIMITED SERIES
Animal Oddballs — National Geographic, Wildstar Films, and Maximum Effort
Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age — BBC Studios in association with Apple
Secrets of the Bees — National Geographic and Silverback Films
Wild Side of the Moon — Produced by Humble Bee Films for Sky and Love Nature
DOCUMENTARY SHORT
Between Breaths — A Film by Florian Ledoux and Jozef Kaut
Chuuraa — A film by Evgenia Arbugaeva. Supported by National Geographic Society.
Plant Life — Speculative Films, Tangled Bank Studios, Catapult Film Fund, Berkeley Film Foundation
SILA — National Geographic Society, TENT Film
Wild East — Maia Wikler Productions, Sideyard Studios
INVESTIGATIVE
Rhapsody on the Outlaw Ocean — A Film by Ian Urbina and William Segal
Sentient — In Films Pty Ltd, Dogwoof, Madman Entertainment
The Last Place on Earth — Oceanic Preservation Society
PEOPLE & NATURE
Bucks Harbor — Two Wolves Films, National Geographic Society
The Tale of Silyan — National Geographic Documentary Films, Ciconia Film, Concordia Studio, The Corner Shop
To Hold a Mountain — Directed by Biljana Tutorov and Petar Glomazić, Produced by Biljana Tutorov for Wake Up Films, In association with Points North Institute, Catapult Film Fund, Chicken & Egg Films. With the support of InMaat, IDA Enterprise Documentary Fund, Doc Society, Meadow Fund, Secret Sauce Media, Eurimages, Film Centre of Montenegro, Film Center Serbia, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Serbia, CNC, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur région, Slovenian Film Centre, Viba Film, Croatian Audiovisual Centre, UNIQA SEE Future Foundation
PLANET IN CRISIS
The Caldera — ITVS, Independent Lens, Grasso Films
The Plastic Detox — The Production credits should be: A Netflix Documentary | An OPS Productions, An L&T Productions, With Minderoo Pictures and Concordia Studio, In association with City Hill Arts, Bay Bridge Productions and Diamond Docs
Time and Water — National Geographic Documentary Films, Sandbox, Signpost Pictures, Ninmah Foundation, Compass Films
We, The Hated — A Firebreak Films production in association with Passion Planet, BFI/Doc Society, Bertha Foundation. Distributed by Propagate
CINEMATOGRAPHY
A Gorilla Story: Told by David Attenborough — A Netflix Documentary | A Silverback Films Production
Cinematographers: Ben Cherry, Ewan Dryburgh, Benjamin Sadd and Toby Strong
Animal Oddballs: Daringly Different — National Geographic, Wildstar Films, and Maximum Effort
Cinematographers: Chris Watts, Simon De Glanville, Jeff Hester, Tom Rowland, Christian Marot, Andrew Studer, Olly Jelley, Hayes Baxley, Connor Gallagher
Muskox: Survival in the Arctic — Stay Wild Studio, Distributed by Off the Fence
Cinematographer: Chris Schmid
Secrets of the Bees: The Hive — National Geographic and Silverback Films
Cinematographers: John Brown, Alastair MacEwen