Our engagements
Eco-responsibility at the festival
Since its creation in 2009, the Festival's raison d'être has always been to promote the diversity and creativity of European cinema. However, as a major cultural event, we are aware that we generate pollution and are actively working on the issues of ecology and respect for the environment.
A film festival is a formidable platform for alerting, raising awareness, informing, debating, showing, reflecting, questioning, creating, stimulating... but also inspiring audiences. This gathering of men and women from all over Europe to see and make the films of tomorrow is a rich source of culture and a real opportunity to contribute to a profound change in attitudes.
Putting ecology at the heart of the Arcs Film Festival means doing our utmost to contribute to the debate on this subject.
A socially engaged program
The Déplacer les montagnes (Moving Mountains) program aims to bring major social issues up throughout all aspects of our festival, in an approach that is both humble, constructive and socially-engaged. Cinema is a formidable instrument for alerting, raising awareness and galvanizing enthusiasm around issues such as ecology, togetherness and a cinema that is more inclusive and more representative of the diversity of our societies. Déplacer les Montagnes means doing our part, as a film festival, to choose thought-provoking films generating encounters, reflections, sharing of experiences and we hope, new engagements for the future.
Within this framework, we organize actions aimed at the general public:
- Workshops, conferences and debates on these societal topics;
- The "Déplacer les Montagnes" prize, awarded to a film that uses cinema to raise awareness on a particular subject or cause. In partnership with UniversCiné;
- For the younger crowd: meetings with Yann Arthus Bertrand, environmental activist Camille Etienne, engaged Youtubers Akim Omiri and Jérémy Nadeau, and the On est prêt collective;
- Production and broadcast of a nine-episode podcast on the subject, available on SoundCloud and Apple Podcast.
A lab for environmental issues : Cinema Green Lab
The term ‘Lab’ - which refers to a laboratory, a place where you try things out, test things, give yourself permission to experiment - fits in with our approach.
We are not an example of virtue, nor do we give lessons. We don't come up with ready-made solutions, but propose that we think together, highlight examples, experiment and pool our creativity through events for professionals:
- Conference on eco-responsible filming;
- Conference on the production of fiction films, which by their theme or production method, can contribute to raising public awareness of respect for the environment;
- Workshop on the ecological impact of cinemas;
- Case study of an eco-cinema project in an eco-neighbourhood;
- Reflection on better use of paper in cinemas, etc.
A community of engaged audiovisual professionals
The Green Charter for Film Festivals was launched in 2021 at Les Arcs and now has sixty signatory festivals. The idea was born at a workshop attended by a dozen festivals and became a reality thanks to the MIOB network, a group of 7 festivals of which Les Arcs Film Festival is a member. For the 2022 edition, a group of participants decided to create a collective called Collectif 5%, which promotes the commitment of cinema professionals to reduce their consumption by at least 5% a year, in line with the Paris agreements. We are also part of this new collective.
Signing this charter means making a commitment to reduce the pollution generated by our activities and to have a constructive attitude towards our natural and human environments. In practical terms, this means:
- Raising awareness of environmental issues among our public, our partners and our teams;
- Promoting ideas, solutions and behaviours that will help us to defend these issues together;
- Detailed monitoring of our consumption of energy and perishable goods, as well as the quantities of waste and pollution generated by each edition of our events. The Green Charter for Film Festivals calculator establishes a precise carbon footprint to be reduced the following year.
- The public sharing of all this data;
- The drafting of our own charter, which corresponds to our needs, our ambitions, our values and the reality of our events' constraints. This charter is addressed to our partners, our public and our employees.
