SF’s Green Film Festival Returns With Films That Are Actually Fun to Watch

Feel watching films about ecology is the cinematic equivalent of trying to eat a pound of washed arugula without using seasoning or dressing? Then you need to hie thee hence to this year’s Green Film Festival of San Francisco (hereafter “Green Fest”). The 2026 edition of Green Fest runs from October 15-22, 2026. Viewing options once again are either online or in person at the 4-Star Theatre.

Given the Orange Dementia Patient’s ongoing policy of essentially sanctioning gang rape of Earth’s environment, it would have been quite easy (and quite unbearable) to program this year’s Green Fest with wall-to-wall gloom and doom films about near future environmental collapse. Instead, Green Fest’s programming decisionmakers said “Nah.” What they went for instead were films that “pairs sharp environmental storytelling with wit, weirdness, and unapologetic irreverence.”

Green Fest’s Opening Night Film embodies that philosophy in action.  “Hen (6:00 PM on October 15, 2026)” comes from director Gyorgy Palfi, whose films beginning with “Hukkle” revel in absurdism.  A hen escapes a Greek industrial farm and seeks a place to raise her chicks in safety.  After many travails (yes, there’s a “crossing the road” moment), where she finds refuge might be called a different sort of industrial farm.  Incidentally, no animals were harmed in the making of this movie.

For those who prefer their cinematic weirdness to be on a Midnight Movie level, Green Fest’s Eco Horror film this year looks at how far a person would go to get the perfect body.  In Carlos Conceicao’s horror film “Bodyhackers (8:30 PM on October 22, 2026),” environmental activist Denver Blake is about to find out. He originally intended to expose a cosmetics corporation growing fat off exploiting its customers’ insecurities about their beauty. Falling in love with ex-ballerina Renee, who displays such insecurities, leads Blake into the underworld of black-market plastic surgery.

Weirdness with a touch of surrealism can be found in Eduardo Reygadas C.’s quirky short “Fish-Two-Fish (Online and at 6:00 PM on October 19, 2026).” Blue and Red are two “fish” (guys wearing just colored pufferfish hats and jockey shorts) who are essentially couch potatoes. When the water starts running out, the two “fish” plot to use a deep-sea diver statue to smash through the door that keeps them locked in.  But what’s beyond the locked door?

Fish is certainly on the minds of the inhabitants of the Indonesian fishing village known as “Arubara (Online and at 12:00 PM on October 18, 2026).” As Manuel Alberto Maia’s short documentary shows, fishing has been the main livelihood of Arubara’s inhabitants for generations. Thanks to coral reef damage and dwindling fish populations, that tradition is in danger. Will closing the fishing grounds for several months to allow the local ecosystem to recover be a gamble that pays off?

 The wordless routines of lobstermen and kelp harvesters demonstrate how these other workers of the sea are bound to their remote Maine island’s tidal time in Adam Sekuler’s experimental documentary short “Tides (Online and at 12:00 PM on October 18, 2026).”  

Another experimental documentary is Melissa Langer’s feature “In Excess (Online and at 2:00 PM on October 17, 2026).” It looks at the dark side of abundance: waste.  What happens to Philadelphia’s waste once it leaves the city?  Through a combination of CCTV footage, sewer cams, and other found footage, viewers can see the surprising global journey this garbage makes.

Phoebe Hart’s documentary short “Good Neighbours (Online)” may make viewers want to seriously re-think giving Temu or Shein any of their money.  Australian fashion researcher Tiziana Ferrero-Regis discovers that the 23 kilograms of clothing the average Australian throws away winds up in overseas secondhand markets, like the ones in the Solomon Islands capital of Honiara.  While this secondhand clothing may provide both affordable fashion and money, these fast fashion clothes made with synthetic textiles ultimately strain local ecosystems and infrastructure.

The main characters of Kaitlyn Schwalje and Alex Wolf Lewis’ feature documentary “Unless Something Goes Terribly Wrong (Online and at 6:00 PM on October 17, 2026)” might be called people who are deep in poop.  That’s because their job is working at a wastewater processing facility that can never close down.  Yet the equipment used at their facility is aging and upgrades aren’t anywhere in sight.  The film follows Dustin and his crew as they struggle to use workarounds and ingenuity to keep their facility running.

The Nelson brothers, the subjects of Natalie Baszile (“Queen Sugar”) and Hyacinth Parker’s documentary feature “Harvest (Online and at 6:00 PM on October 20, 2026),” face daunting problems keeping their own farm running.  Thanks to a trifecta of drought, equipment breakdowns, and dwindling finances, the coming year will be make-or-break time for these fourth-generation commodity farmers.  Can an unexpected opportunity provide the lucky break they need? 

Luck also plays a big role for the subject of Green Fest’s Centerpiece Film, Jeffrey Reiner’s documentary “The Terroirist (2:30 PM on October 18, 2026).”  It’s a portrait of Boony Doon Vineyard winemaker Randall Grahm.  He’s searching for a completely new grape varietal native to North America.  Will Grahm’s search turn out to be Sisyphean?

The Oceans Seven marathon swim might be considered a challenge that’s less Sisyphean. Basically, swimmers attempt to swim seven ocean water channels such as the Moloka’i Channel (23 nautical miles) and the Cook Strait (more than 12 nautical miles). Jeff W. Tseng's feature documentary “Don’t Be Prey (Online and at 6:00 PM on October 16, 2026)” follows one man on his efforts to do all the swims and reclaim his life.

A different sort of emotional reclamation takes place in Ben Knight and Bernie Broudy’s documentary “Best Day Ever (Online and at 4:15 PM on October 17, 2026).”  Using the stories of Greg Durso and Allie Bianchi, the filmmakers show how making mountain biking accessible to the disabled brings in community, independence, friendship, and human connection.

The central subject of Jeff Springer’s documentary short “Unregular Joe (Online and at 4:15 PM on October 17, 2026)” faced a different problem involving biking. He’s a Brooklyn bike shop owner who faced online retailer predation. His answer is to close up his shop and change his business model to that of delivering bike camping experiences in New York City.

One of the pleasures of camping is being able to disconnect from human measures of time. However, that’s only a temporary feeling when compared to a lifeform that has lived for millennia. Shannon Breen and Justin Oliphant’s short documentary “Elders Of Time (Online and at 2:00 PM on October 17, 2026)” considers what would happen if time was measured by the growth of Bristlecone Pine Trees. Time to these trees is not uniform but shaped by climate, place, and survival.  Not being in sync with human schedules is not a bug but an important feature.

Human effort had nothing to do with the creation of Utah’s Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument.  As Daniel J. Richardson’s short documentary “The Grand Staircase (Online)” explains, the monument’s incredible layers of rock were carved by 190 million years’ worth of wind and water. But the vandals of the Orange Dementia Patient’s administration want to trash this natural wonder.

Believers in “Creation Care” would be appalled by plans to ruin the Grand Staircase monument. These Evangelical Christians felt there was a moral obligation to care for the Earth. Creation Care was the brainchild of Reverend Richard Cizik.  This former Ronald Reagan speechwriter had the potential to have his idea accepted in general by the Christian Evangelical community.  Why that didn’t happen and why Cizik is now a part-time Lyft (electric vehicle) driver is told in Sophie Morgan’s short documentary “In Earth We Trust (Online and at 6:00 PM on October 21, 2026).”

Sarah Lasley’s short “Climate Control (Online and at 6:00 PM on October 19, 2026),” uses absurdity to show the generational difficulties of capturing people’s attention regarding the climate crisis. It concerns a director trying to make a documentary about the consequences of fossil fuel extraction. Trouble is, the AI agent being used gives the director a generic love story.

An example of someone young who is paying attention to environmental issues can be seen in John Izenberg and Palmer Morse’s documentary short “Grassroots: The Re:Wild Your Campus Story (Online and at 6:00 PM on October 21, 2026).” Mackenzie Feldman’s environmental nonprofit Re:Wild Your Campus is dedicated to protecting college workers, students, and staff from toxic pesticide exposure on their campuses. Of course, Feldman’s organization goes up against the world’s largest chemical companies.

However, getting pesticides banned from college campuses and even Europe is not the same thing as the chemical companies abandoning manufacture of those pesticides. As Brazilian geographer Larissa Bombardi discovers in Joao Amorim’s short documentary “Pesticides Without Borders: A Global Dilemma (Online),” those banned pesticides are simply sold to the Global South. Why this chemical colonialism happens can be blamed on a combination of corporate lobbying, political decisions, and regulatory loopholes. The price for this colonialism winds up getting paid in peoples’ health and devastated environments.

Chemical colonialism is just another face of environmental racism. And nothing says “environmental racism” better than what the families living in Louisiana’s River Parishes are going through.  As Samuel George’s short documentary “Fenceline: Shadows Over The River Parish (Online and at 6:00 PM on October 21, 2026)” explains, Louisiana’s River Parish area has been home to freed slaves and their descendants.  But those communities are now surrounded by petrochemical industry facilities, which means they have to deal with pollution-related illnesses and the pressures of industrial expansion.  The people who live in the River Parish, though, are not planning on rolling over for the oil industry.

Nor are communities necessarily rolling over and letting data centers be built in their backyard. Maya Estrera’s short documentary “Hyperscaled (Online and at 6:00 PM on October 21, 2026)” shows how community members affected by the arrival of a “Project Marvel” data center have valid reasons for concern.  A data center can only operate by sucking up huge amounts of water and energy.  Sadly, the hyperscalers behind “Project Marvel” haven’t been forthcoming regarding the real world impacts of their proposed facilities.

Closing Night Film honors belongs to Lev Omelchenko and Nolan Huber’s “A City In The Forest (6:00 PM on October 22, 2026).”  It’s a portrait of the diverse intersectional movement fighting the construction of Atlanta’s Cop City.  That’s the nickname given to a proposed police training facility.  It would be the largest such facility in America, but building it would require the razing of an urban forest.  The fight against Cop City brings up a number of urgent social justice issues such as environmental racism and the criminalization of dissent.