From 29-31 October, the Frontline Club is hosting screenings as part of the Green Caravan Film Festival, a travelling festival of environmental and socially conscious films. The full lineup can be found here.

This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Holly Morris via Skype.

Some 200 women defiantly cling to their ancestral homeland in Chernobyl’s radioactive “Exclusion Zone.” While most of their neighbours have long since fled and their husbands have gradually died off, this stubborn sisterhood is hanging on — even, oddly, thriving — while trying to cultivate an existence on toxic earth.

Why do they insist on living on farms that the Ukrainian government and radiation scientists have deemed uninhabitable? How do they manage to get by, isolated, in an abandoned landscape guarded by soldiers and rife with wild animals? How has the radiation affected them these past 29 years?

“Starvation is what scares me, not radiation,” says resident Hanna Zavorotyna. That stark choice reveals the incredible journey that the women have traveled: from Stalin’s enforced famines in the 1930s, through Nazi occupation, to nuclear disaster. Like the wolves, moose, wild boar and other wildlife not seen for decades that have come back to the abandoned forests around Chernobyl, the women of the Exclusion Zone have an extraordinary story of survival, and offer a dark yet strangely affirming portrait of post-apocalyptic life.

Directed and produced by: Anne Bogart
Runtime: 72′
Year: 2015
Country: USA

From 29-31 October, the Frontline Club is hosting screenings as part of the Green Caravan Film Festival, a travelling festival of environmental and socially conscious films. The full lineup can be found here.

This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Anna Roussillon via Skype.

January 2011 in Egypt was marked by anti-government demonstrations. While tens of thousands of protestors gathered in Cairo, poor villagers in the country’s south followed the tense situation in Tahrir Square on their TV screens and in the daily newspapers. It is from their perspective that this documentary captures the political changes in Egypt, from the toppling of President Mubarak to the election of Mohamed Morsi. I Am the People reveals the villagers’ hopes and disappointments and shows that, despite the wild events, very little has actually changed in their lives.

The film presents a charming, funny and fascinating portrait of one family in Egypt’s rural South, as they follow the Tahrir uprising, charting their progression from amused distant observers of the events in Cairo through their increasing engagement and politicisation. Beautifully filmed, I Am The People offers a refreshing perspective on the Arab Spring and its aftermath, and shows with great intimacy the ways in which the events have touched ordinary lives away from the square.

Directed by: Anna Roussillon
Produced by: Thomas Micoulet, Karim Aitouna, Malik Menaï
Runtime: 110′
Year: 2014
Country: France

The Green Caravan Film Festival (GCFF) is a travelling festival of environmental and socially conscious films. It has toured Kuwait and Dubai for four years and now makes its London debut with screenings at the Frontline Club in west London and Rich Mix in east London.  The Frontline Club will be hosting three days of screenings showcasing the best of the festival, taking place in the evenings on 29-31 October.

The festival hopes to bring together a variety of audiences, filmmakers, NGOs and supporters that can discover, share and cooperate on the vital issues presented by the films in an atmosphere of inspired camaraderie and passion.

This year the festival has invited short films from the MENA region to enter an audience judged competition for the first time. The feature length films that make up 80% of the festival are carefully curated by GCFF to ensure that the stories being told and issues brought forward are done in an inspiring and well crafted way. The festival believes that the powerful medium of film can be a catalyst for positive change and we hope that it will entertain and challenge all those involved.

Website: www.thegreencaravan.com
Twitter: @gcfilmfest
Facebook: /gcfilmfest

Screening schedule:

Thursday 29 October, 7:00 PM – I Am the People

Friday 30 October, 8:00 PM – The Wanted 18

Saturday 31 October, 4:00 PM – Babushkas of Chernobyl

Saturday 31 October, 7:00 PM – Hadwin’s Judgement

From 29-31 October, the Frontline Club is hosting screenings as part of the Green Caravan Film Festival, a travelling festival of environmental and socially-conscious films. The full lineup can be found here.

The Wanted 18 recreates an astonishing true story: the Israeli army’s pursuit of 18 cows, whose independent milk production on a Palestinian collective farm was declared “a threat to the national security of the state of Israel.”

In response to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, a group of people from the town of Beit Sahour decide to buy 18 cows and produce their own milk as a co-operative. Their venture is so successful that the collective farm becomes a landmark, and the cows local celebrities – until the Israeli army takes note and declares that the farm is an illegal security threat. Consequently, the dairy is forced to go underground, and the cows continue to produce their “Intifada milk” with the Israeli army in relentless pursuit.

Directed by: Amer Shomali and Paul Cowan
Runtime: 75′
Country: Canada
Year: 2014