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 conscious of the fact that we generate pollution, and are actively working on ecology questions and towards greater 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 witness and shape future of cinema is an enrichment for society, as well as a real opportunity to participate in a profound change of mentality. Placing ecology at the heart of the Arcs Film Festival is our best contribution to participating in reflection 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 people test things out, give themselves permission to try - fits in with our approach. We are not an example of virtue, nor do we give lessons; we don't come with off-the-shelf solutions, but propose to think together, to put forward examples, to experiment, to pool our creativity, through events for industry professionals:
– Conference on eco-conscious filming;
- Conference on the production of fiction films, which by their theme or production method, can contribute to raise public awareness on environmental issues;
- Workshop on the ecological impact of movie theaters;
- Case study of an eco-cinema project in an eco-neighborhood;
- Reflection on better use of paper in cinemas, etc.
A community of engaged audiovisual professionals
The Green Charter for Film Festivals was born in 2021 at Les Arcs, and now counts some 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, including ourselves. For the 2022 edition, a group of participants decided to create a collective called Collectif 5%, which promotes the engagement 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 committing to reduce the emissions we generate and to adopt a constructive attitude towards our natural and human environments. In short, this means:
- Raising awareness of environmental issues among our public, partners and teams;
- Promoting ideas, solutions and behaviours that will contribute to defending these issues together;
- Detailed monitoring of our energy consumption, perishable goods, as well as the quantities of waste and pollution generated during each edition of our events. The Green Charter for Film Festivals calculator establishes an estimate carbon footprint to be reduced the following year.
- The public sharing of this data;
- The drafting of our own charters, which reflect our needs, our ambitions, our values and the reality of our events' constraints. Those charters are addressed to our partners, our public as well as our employees.
