|
WELCOME
Thanks for joining us for the 2026 Boulder’s Environment / Nature / Outdoors Film Festival. We promise you a riveting film lineup, bookended by spirited, music-filled parties, in this our eighth year.
The fun kicks off Thursday, July 16, at the Hilton Garden Inn Boulder, in the courtyard on Canyon. You’ll sway to the Atom Collective’s jazzy sounds and enjoy libations, a buffet, plus passed appetizers. Don’t forget: we’ll be taking your photo before you head into the opening night film at the Dairy Arts Center. This year it’s THE KEEPER; director Jon Bowermaster and Cindy Medina of Colorado WaterKeepers will be on hand.
All four days of Boulder ENOFF are packed with features and short films, fascinating speakers, and more. It’ll all wrap up the evening of July 19 with the presentation of the festival’s Earth Angel award to Alex Antoniou, Ph.D., followed by the closing night film, THE LAST DIVE directed by Cody Sheehy. Festivities then wrap up with a reception at the Velvet Elk Lounge with live music from Hazel Miller and the Collective.
Check out this program to get the inside scoop on the films and speakers. This year, Boulder ENOFF delivers a diverse set of films on key nature and environmental subjects—alternative energy solutions, outdoor adventure, ocean ecology and marine life, and the sheer beauty of the world’s natural environs.
Use this program to plan your schedule or check our festival site at www.BoulderENOFF.org.
Seek out the films that appeal to you and learn the latest from the experts who, like you, love this earth and celebrate its magnificence.
Join Us!
Richard Paradise
Festival Founder/Director
| | |
JOIN US for our OPENING NIGHT EVENT of the 2026 Boulder Environmental/ Nature/Outdoors Film Festival Thursday, July 16th at the Dairy Arts Center.
Opening Night Event Overview
5:30 pm to 7:00 pm
Opening Night Reception — start the festival off with a jazzy vibe, food, and conversation at the Hilton Garden Hotel Courtyard on Canyon Blvd.
Libations, Buffet, & Appetizers, live music by the ATOM COLLECTIVE jazz quartet, and then walk or drive over to the Dairy Arts Center (1 block away) for our opening night film, THE THE KEEPER, with its filmmaker, Jon Bowermaster and members of the Colorado RiverKeepers Alliance.
Make sure to get your photo taken in front of our Step & Repeat at the reception beforehand.
Buffet and passed Appetizers will be served in the Hilton Garden Inn Courtyard Drinks (each attendee will be provided one (1) free drink tickets (cocktail, wine, beer, or soda) to start, and cash bar thereafter.
BUY YOUR TICKETS ONLINE CLICK HERE
| | |
Atom Collective is an eclectic jazz combo that performs instrumental versions of jazz and pop classics.
Featuring
Kyle Banker at Piano, Tobin Munsat on Drums, Adisa Nickerson on Trumpet, & Todd Van Selus on Bass. (Often seen at the St. Julian Hotel)
| | |
7:30 pm to 9:00 pm
Film at the Dairy Arts Center.
The party shifts from the Hilton to the Dairy Arts Center (one block away), for the opening night film THE KEEPER starting at 7:30 PM in the Gordon Gamm Theater.
We suggest you park at the Dairy Arts Center, and walk to the reception and then back for the film at 7:30 pm. One Combined ticket for both events.
To purchase tickets in advance for combined Opening Night Reception and Film click here to BUY YOUR TICKETS.
| | |
OPENING NIGHT FILM - THE KEEPER
Director Jon Bowermaster and Cindy Medina, Colorado WaterKeeper, and others will join us for a discussion on Colorado river ways and the people that keep them environmentally safe.
Cantankerous, charismatic and passionately committed, this river keeper — John Lipscomb — reflects on his 25 years patrolling the Hudson River, traveling more than 80,000 miles, by wooden boat.
Like rivers around the world, the Hudson — America’s First River and the Birthplace of the American Environmental Movement — boomed as a growing human population used it for transportation, sustenance and for many years a dumping ground.
The river paid a price for all this use and abuse, struggling against its share of contamination. For the past nearly three decades the river’s poet laureate and literal “eyes on the river,” Captain John, has been at the forefront of each of those fights, taking on industrial and human pollution, suffering the losses and celebrating victories.
While he has had successes on the Hudson, committing a life to protecting a river is a never- ending fight. Today he is one of more than 300 “keepers” around the globe, looking out for their respective rivers.
Directed by Jon Bowermaster
Runtime: 80 minutes
| | |
Updated June 10, 2026
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
GENERAL FESTIVAL INFORMATION
ALL-ACCESS FESTIVAL PASS - Only $250
BEST VALUE IF YOU PLAN TO BE WITH US FOR THE ENTIRE FESTIVAL. BUY YOUR FESTIVAL PASS HERE
Pass-holders receive:
Access to All Events/Parties/Films
NO online service fees or ticket fees (Dairy Arts Center) for individual films/events you select when you buy a festival pass.
Opening Night Event Ticket - Only $75
Opening Night Reception (21+ age event)
Festival Passes and Opening Night event on sale now either online or at the Dairy Arts Center box daily.
How to Attend - Buy Online, in-person at the Dairy Arts Center
All-Access Festival Pass: $250 (Best Deal if you plan to be with us 3 or more days)
Individual Film Tickets: $15 + DAC ticket fees
Opening Night Reception + Film: $75
Opening Night Film Only: $20
Award Ceremony & Closing Film Only: $20
Award Ceremony, Closing Night Film, and Reception: $70
FREE PARKING located at the Dairy Arts Center parking lot and surrounding residential streets. Additional low cost parking at the Hilton Garden/Embassy Suite Hotels - 1 block away. Park at the DAC and walk over to the Hilton for the reception.
For more information please contact rich@BoulderENOFF.org or call us at 774-392-2972 for details.
Thank you, Sponsors!
ENOFF is made possible by: Fjallraven (Boulder), Alpine Bank (Boulder), Regional Air Quality Council, Denver Zoo, Ocean First, Earth Love Cleaning, Plantiness, Twig Hair Salon, Floral Bumblebee, Mindful Works, Boulder Camera, Hilton Hotels on Canyon, Dairy Arts Center, KGNU Radio, Boulder Lifestyle, Boulder Colorado Renewable Energy Society, Boulder County Film Commission, and others.
| | 2026 Boulder Environmental Nature Film Festival's complete Festival Schedule is now on Sale Below. Click image or URL to buy tickets. | |
Friday, July 17 at 4:00 PM @ Boedecker Cinema
YANUNI
In Brazil’s Amazon, fearless Indigenous leader Juma Xipaia defends her land and people against forces threatening their survival. Her extraordinary courage and resilience is captured here—as mother, warrior, and a symbol of resistance for her people.
The film follows the life and activism of Juma Xipaia, an Indigenous leader from the Brazilian Amazon. The film traces her journey from her community in Xipaya territory to national politics, where she became Brazil’s first Secretary of Articulation and Promotion of Indigenous Rights under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. It highlights Juma’s role in defending her people and the rainforest against illegal mining, land-grabbing, and corporate exploitation, despite surviving multiple assassination attempts. It also portrays her partnership with Hugo Loss, her husband and head of Special Operations at Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources, Brazil’s environmental protection agency, who conducts high-risk missions to dismantle illegal mining camps.
Director Richard Ladkani
Runtime: 112 mins.
| |  |
Friday, July 17 at 4:30PM @ Gordon Gamm Theater
THE ART OF ADVENTURE
Between 1957 and 1958, Robert Bateman and Bristol Foster undertook the adventure of a lifetime — driving a Land Rover dubbed “the Grizzly Torque” 30,000 kilometres across Africa, India, Southeast Asia, and Australia. More than just an adrenaline-pumping adventure story of two young men crossing half the planet, The Art of Adventure maps out how Bateman and Foster’s trip inspired a love of nature that would last a lifetime. The film interweaves an account of their travels with a look their lives through the decades that followed: Bateman became a beloved Canadian wildlife painter and Foster a prominent biologist and the first director of BC’s Ecological Reserves program. Through in-depth interviews with friends and family and the original 16mm film footage of their incredible journey, director Alison Reid shows how the trip expanded the pair’s knowledge of the physical world while deepening their spiritual and emotional connection to it. A heartwarming, inspirational love letter to the adventure of life itself.
-“A rare kind of documentary - intimate, awe-filled, and unforgettable. It reminds us that wonder isn’t childish; it’s essential.”
-“An outstanding doc that provides joy in the self-discovery that only seems possible from exploring far off places with an open heart."
Directed by Alison Reid
Runtime: 86 mins.
| | |
Friday, July 17 at 7:00PM @ BOEDECKER CINEMA
THIS IS NOT A DRILL
Discussion afterwards with director Oren Jacoby via Zoom
As extreme weather around the world grows deadlier, a new generation of leaders is rising to face the challenges. In the American South, hard hit by climate disasters, three unlikely heroes take on one of the most powerful industries in the world.
25-year-old Justin J. Pearson rallies a multiracial grassroots coalition to try and defeat a crude oil pipeline in Memphis, Tennessee. Roishetta Ozane, a mother of six from Louisiana, transforms personal loss into political action, taking her fight from the storm-ravaged streets to the halls of Congress. Sharon Wilson, a former oil insider turned methane hunter, uses infrared cameras to expose invisible deadly gases pouring from fracking sites and pipelines in Texas that have been hiding in plain sight.
Backing them are unlikely allies, descendents of John D. Rockefeller, who have turned against their family’s oil empire to expose ExxonMobil’s decades long coverup. Together, this coalition uncovers what they call Big Oil’s “Big Con”—an industry doubling down on fossil fuels while disguising the truth.
With gripping access, THIS IS NOT A DRILL is the story of courage, betrayal and grassroots victories that shows how people, armed with only grit and determination, can stand up to power. The smallest voices can topple giants.
Audience Award—Best Documentary Feature (Globe Docs)
Directed by Oren Jacoby
Runtime: 76 mins
| | |
Friday, July 17 at 7:30PM @ Gordon Gamm Theater
THE SHEPHERD AND THE BEAR
Followed by a pre-recorded Zoom conversation with director Max Keegan
Set high in the majestic French Pyrenees, THE SHEPHERD AND THE BEAR explores a conflict provoked by the reintroduction of brown bears in the midst of a traditional shepherding community. The film follows an aging shepherd who struggles to find a successor as bears prey on his flock, and a teenage boy who becomes obsessed with tracking the bears. Through its breathtaking cinematography and immersive storytelling,
THE SHEPHERD AND THE BEAR is a modern folktale about tradition, community and humanity’s relationship with a vanishing natural world.
The film won the Living with Wildlife Award at the 48th International Wildlife Film Festival and played at Margaret Mead Film Festival in the American Museum of Natural History, Santa Barbara, Big Sky Documentary, Visions du Réel, Full Frame, Sydney Film Festival, Salem Film Fest where it was nominated for the American Cinematography Magazine Award.
–“Lyrical, visually and aurally ravishing” – Screen Daily
–“Unforgettable, visually stunning” – Deadline
–“A richly satisfying reminder of the power of longitudinal verite” – Filmmaker Magazine
Directed by Max Keegan
Runtime: 101 mins
| | |
Saturday, July 18 at 1:00PM @ Boedecker cinema
THREE SHORT FILMS ABOUT BIRDS
Discussion afterward: TBD
THE BIRDS
Told through the cinematic experience of wildlife filmmaker Martin Dohrn, THE BIRDS finds meaning and pathos as it gets up close to one of England’s little-known wonders of the natural world. As Martin chases down the twisting and turning of giant flocks of shore birds on England’s Wash estuary, he attempts to literally record evolution in action as a peregrine falcon scythes through the mind-blowing murmurations – astonishingly large numbers of birds flying in synchronized patterns and creating shapes in the air. Ultimately, this feature short reveals important insights not only into the hidden mechanisms of nature, but also into the psyche of a man facing up to the end of his career.
Directed by Dave Allen
Runtime: 40 minutes
WILD HOPE: BUILDING FOR BIRDS
Millions of birds pass through our yards during their bi-annual migrations, but they face an invisible killer along the way: glass windows. In the US alone, an estimated one billion birds die each year when they collide with windows. Now, two organizations help pave the way to a bird-friendly future.
The Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington, D.C. is located in the middle of a major migration route that birds have flown for thousands of years. To stop collisions from happening on their campus, the Zoo’s team uses patterned decals to make glass visible to our feathered friends. In New York City, migrating birds face a gauntlet of concentrated glass – and many do not survive. The Jacob K. Javits Convention Center was once one of the city’s worst offenders, but creative renovations have transformed the building into a wildlife oasis.
The Zoo and the Javits Center have inspired groundbreaking legislation that reimagines what our cities can do for birds, but a critical obstacle remains: our residences account for nearly 50% of bird strikes. However, simple solutions—like window paint, decals, or even a bar of soap with patterns spaced 2 inches apart—could save the lives of millions of birds.
Directed by Tangle Bank Studios
Runtime: 16 minutes
A MYSTICAL ORNITHOLOGY
In this lyrical portrait, ornithologist, poet, and professor Drew Lanham invites us into his South Carolina farm, where birdwatching becomes both refuge and revelation. As he listens for absent songs in the spring air, Drew not only reckons with loss and memory but also takes action—cultivating his land as a sanctuary, an underground railroad for winged migrants. His reflections move beyond science into wonder, blurring the line between human and bird. For Drew, they are more than names on a list—they are companions, teachers, and a last wild hope.
Directed by Jeremy Seifert and Benjamin James Roberts
Runtime: 11 minutes
| |
Saturday, July 18 at 4:00PM @ Boedecker cinema
Nature and Outdoors Short Films Program
Finalists of short films Program curated from over 100 submissions to the festival in 2025 - An eclectic mix of environmental Advocacy, Wildlife conservation, and artistic expressions of nature and what it all means to us.
LIST OF SHORT FILMS SELECTED WILL BE ANNOUNCED BY mid June
| | |
Saturday, July 18 at 4:30PM @ Gordon Gamm Theater
THE LAKE
Director Abby ellis will join us in person
Climate Change Doc From Leonardo DiCaprio, Jimmy Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi Raises Alarms About the Fate of the Great Salt Lake
An environmental nuclear bomb looms in Utah, as they race to prevent a catastrophic ecological and public health collapse.
The Lake is a vérité film that follows three individuals (two intrepid scientists Bonnie Baxter and Ben Abbott alongside political insider Brian Steed) fighting to save a dying lake. They see what’s coming—poisoned air, a collapsing ecosystem, a community on the brink—and they throw themselves into the everyday, often mundane work of trying to stop it. As they push against bureaucracy, apathy, and the ticking clock of a crisis decades in the making, something eerie and heartbreaking lingers at the edges: the dust rising in the background, a reminder of what will be lost if they fail.
2026 Sundance Winner - Special Jury Award for Impact for Change
“‘The Lake’ is so much more than a regionally isolated issue documentary. Its lessons should apply to every single environmental fight around the world.” -Variety
Directed by Abby Ellis
Runtime: 88 minutes
| | |
Saturday, July 19 at 7:00PM @ BOEDECKER CINEMA
TO USE A MOUNTAIN
Q&A with Director Casey Carter
Seconds of exposure, generations of debate, the history of nations, and epochs of geologic change – all overlap in the landscapes that define the American nuclear legacy and the quest to isolate 77,000 tons of nuclear waste for 10,000 years. TO USE A MOUNTAIN presents vignettes of ruin and salvation in six candidate communities for the nation’s sacrificial nuclear dumping ground.
Directed by Casey Carter
Runtime: 99 Mins
| | |
Saturday, July 19 at 7:30PM @ Gordon Gamm Theater
burn, scar
Director Hillary Bachelder and Camille Stevens-Rumann, Colorado Forest Restoration Institute will join us for a discussion
Prescribed fire– the practice of setting small burns to clear ecosystems of overgrowth– is a critical tool for climate resiliency and forest health. But in 2022, a burn set by the U.S. Forest Service in the mountains of northern New Mexico escaped its firelines and spiraled out of control to become the largest wildfire in the state’s history. Weaving together both sides of the story – the locals impacted by the fire and struggling to rebuild, alongside the Forest Service’s efforts to resume stewardship of the land following their tragic misstep – “burn, scar” is a personal and nuanced story of resilience, resistance, and our enduring connection to the land and each other.
Directed by: Hillary Bachelder
Length: 90 mins
| | |
Sunday, July 20 at 1:00PM @
Boedecker Cinema
MELT
In his inimitable way, Geyrhalter (OUR DAILY BREAD, HOMO SAPIENS) travels the world of snow and ice. From Japan to the Alps, Northern Canada to Iceland, and Antarctica; MELT is the story of people living amid the gradual disappearance of the ice that was once presumed infinite.
Along the Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route in Japan, bulldozers carve out spectacular, 50-feet-high walls of snow to build corridors specifically to attract tourists, while the celebrated ski region Val-d'Isère in southern France uses artificial snow to create a winter wonderland. In Switzerland, snowplows carve furrows into the glaciers to preserve the snow for the coming winter sports season. And in Iceland, visitors pose in front of gigantic blocks of ice that are gradually being swallowed by the sea.
Everything seems normal – but behind the apparently perfect white facade, the world's ice and snow are melting at an alarming rate.
Everywhere Geyrhalter goes, his subjects talk of melting glaciers and increasingly extreme weather conditions, revealing how they experience climate change in their everyday lives and work. Filmed between 2021 and 2025, MELT preserves some of the world's most compelling frozen landscapes, addressing some of the greatest environmental and political questions of our age.
“A meticulous, contemplative sweep of the globe, Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s impressive doc takes stock of humanity’s toil to control ice and snow as the climate crisis advances.”
—Carmen Gray, The Film Verdict
“Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s latest documentary is a fascinating, unsentimental love letter to snow and icy landscapes.”
—Susanne Gottlieb, Cineuropa
Directed by Nikolaus Geyrhalter
Runtime: 127 mins
| | |
Sunday, July 20 at 1:30PM @ Gordon Gamm theater
GHOST ELEPHANTS
Join us afterwrds for a discussion — TBD
For over a decade, Dr. Steve Boyes, conservation biologist and National Geographic Explorer, has been in search of a mysterious, elusive herd of Ghost Elephants in the highlands of Angola, deep within its forests. From acclaimed director Werner Herzog (“Grizzly Man”), GHOST ELEPHANTS follows Boyes on an epic journey as he sets out with some of the best master trackers in the world, in pursuit of an animal long believed to be a myth.
“This hypnotic and haunting documentary turns a search for mythical beasts into a profound meditation on memory, loss, and the vanishing wild.” – Screen Zealots
Directed by Werner Herzog
Runtime: 99 mins
| | | |
CLOSING NIGHT EVENT
Alex Antoniou, Ph.D., our 2026 EARTH ANGEL HONOREE
Prior to Closing Night film, the festival will honor Dr. Alex Antoniou with the festival’s EARTH ANGEL statuette for his work in marine life conservation advocacy and education.
Dr. Antoniou began his shark conservation path in 1994 as the Director of Field Operations for the Shark Research Institute based in Princeton, New Jersey. He was the first to tag whale sharks in the Caribbean with satellite transmitters, tracking the sharks thousands of miles and to great depths of the Gulf of Mexico. He is currently working as the volunteer CEO for Fins Attached, which he founded in 2010. He has had a passion for shark research and conservation for over 25 years.
Dr. Antoniou has had projects in Honduras, Baja California, the Galapagos, Costa Rica, Malpelo Island, Guadalupe Island, and the Revillagigedo Islands. On October 28, 1999, Dr. Antoniou met with 50 Honduran government officials to ask for protection for whale sharks in their waters. After reviewing data provided, the Honduran government decreed the whale shark a protected species their territorial waters. Passage of this law made Honduras the first nation in the Caribbean to protect whale sharks.
Over the past thirty plus years, Dr. Antoniou has established strong partnerships with scientists around the world. In recognition for his dedication towards shark conservation, Alex was awarded the 2017 “Shark Guardian of the Year” award from the Shark Project of Germany.
In 2022, Dr. Antoniou spearheaded the creation of an ocean coalition called, One Ocean Worldwide Coalition, comprising of Fins Attached, The Rob Stewart Sharkwater Foundation, For the Oceans Foundation and United Conservationists. The equation is simple, Save Sharks + Save our Oceans = Save Us.
https://finsattached.org/
Alex lives in Colorado Spring, Colorado.
| | |
JOIN US for our CLOSING NIGHT EVENT of the 2026 Boulder Environmental/ Nature/Outdoors Film Festival on Sunday, July 19th at the Dairy Arts Center.
Closing Night Event Overview
Opening Night Program includes (Reception at Hilton Garden Inn and Opening Film at the Dairy Arts Center)
Sunday, July 19 at 4:00PM @ Gordon Gamm theater
CLOSING FILM: THE LAST DIVE
Followed by a pre-recorded interview with Director Cody Sheehy
Terry Kennedy is a legend. A former associate of the Hell’s Angels, he sailed into the Sea of Cortez in the 1980s on a boat named Erotica. But while Terry’s friends have great memories of partying with him at sea, his legacy goes beyond mere popularity. His time on the water transformed Terry, who devoted his life to the conservation of manta rays after bonding with a giant manta he named “Willy Wow.” Over 19 years off the coast of San Benedicto Island, Terry and Willy Wow developed an extraordinary relationship that changed our understanding of mantas forever.
Now in his eighties, Terry goes on the adventure of a lifetime in The Last Dive, setting sail with his friends and a documentary crew in hopes of fulfilling his “dying wish” to swim with Willy Wow one more time. Director Cody Sheehy takes viewers along on their journey, using Terry’s story as a window into the developing science behind manta rays’ extraordinary intelligence, as well as the urgent need to protect these “gentle giants” and their stunning natural habitat.
Directed by Cody Sheehy
Runtime: 88 mins
| |
6:15 pm to 8:15 pm - CLOSING WRAP PARTY
Festival Wrap Party at Velvet Elk Lounge, 2037 13th St, Boulder
featuring the live music of Hazel Miller and the Collective.
Buffet, Appetizers, and libations will be served and live band music. Gift Certificates will be raffle off for products provided by sponsors.
Parking is free on Sundays in downtown at the Boulderado Hotel, Boulder Bookstore, and on the streets near the lounge.
BUY YOUR TICKETS ONLINE CLICK HERE
| | Colorado-based music icon Hazel Miller has a reputation for “bringing it” whether the event is a club setting, concert, festival, or non-profit fundraiser. Hazel has toured North America, Europe, the Far East, the Middle East, and Central America. Her powerful voice stands out and her beautiful spirit shines through to the delight of her loyal fans. With one of the tightest and most versatile bands on the scene, this show will please not only Mom, but the whole family. | | Grant provided by the Boulder Convention and Visitors Bureau | | |
Thank you again, to all of our Sponsors!
ENOFF is made possible by: Fjallraven (Boulder), Alpine Bank (Boulder), Regional Air Quality Council, Denver Zoo, Ocean First, Earth Love Cleaning, Plantiness, Twig Hair Salon, Floral Bumblebee, Mindful Works, Boulder Camera, Hilton Hotels on Canyon, Dairy Arts Center, KGNU Radio, Boulder Lifestyle, Boulder Colorado Renewable Energy Society, Boulder County Film Commission, and others.
| |
Our Mission
Boulder Environmental/Nature/Outdoors Film Festival celebrates the natural world around us – the ocean, land, nature, and the air we breathe. The selection of feature and short films will be drawn from around the world to bring to you both a local and global perspective of the challenges and solutions ahead for our environment. The films are just the beginning. Making your festival experience more enlightening, special guests from film, media, politics and science will discuss the films’ issues with our audiences afterwards.
More information needed? Call us at 774-392-2972
| |
P.O. Box 4393 Boulder, CO 80306-4393
774-392-2972 rich@boulderENOFF.org www.boulderENOFF.org
| | | | |
