We are so excited to share more compelling environmental documentaries with you in 2015! Our screening team is hard at work reviewing this year's entries, with over 330 film submissions from 46 countries for the festival in May.

Meet our next team member Nelson, an indie film buff who came to San Francisco State to study Marketing from Buffalo, New York. 

Watch online now! The beautiful, wonderful, animated film Sticky, winner of the Best Short Award at the 2014 San Francisco Green Film Festival.

Heather Louie has been a big part of the Festival team since 2011 and is a valued member of our Board of Directors. By day, she is a Sr. Technical Associate & Lead Auditor, SCS Global Services. Here she describes what hooked her into the Festival.

Donate now to help us reach our $2,000 Gift Match Challenge goal by December 31!

Thanks to the generosity of Board Members, you can now double your donation. They will match the first $1,000 we raise to smash through our year-end goal! Meaning your generous gift will have an even bigger impact on our two core programs: Filmmaker Fund and Schools & the Festival Fund.

Here's where film submissions for the 5th San Francisco Green Film Festival have come in from so far. Filmmakers from thirty different countries have already submitted their film.

We know we can extend our reach even further!

Meet our next volunteer Starr, a horticulturist and permaculturist, who takes film classes at the City College of San Francisco where she hopes to promote permaculture as well as environmental issues.

Food is front of mind as we all come together with friends and family for Thanksgiving. Whether it's your old family recipe for pumpkin pie or a new take on turkey and all the trimmings, one things for sure, sharing food and traditions is what makes this holiday special.

Here are our top three Festival documentaries that have sharing and food at the heart of their story.

I’d like to share with you one of my favorite green moments of 2014 and ask you to be a part of making many more special moments in 2015.

At this year’s Festival, a man got up on stage and brought the house down. Those in the crowd who weren’t crying, were cheering so loudly in standing ovation that the panel discussion took some time to begin.

The San Francisco Green Film Festival is entirely run by volunteers. They work tirelessly and year round to produce a week long festival that combines a passion towards the environment along with one for film in order to educate and inspire.

Here is a behind the scenes look at the various types of volunteers we have working here and what drew them to joining the festival team. Coming from unique backgrounds and different personal interests they are all brought together with one simple commonality: spreading environmental awareness. 

We're always excited at this time of year as we launch our Call for Entries for next year's films. Our hunt for the most compelling, new environmental films is beginning and we can't wait to see what we find. You can submit films online or share with a friend through FilmFreeway.

Scary movies come in many shapes and sizes, some of the most famous are shark-shaped. Last night we proved that not all shark films have to be horrors with a special screening of Shark Girl.

This Halloween, join us for awe-inspiring new film Shark Girl & a celebration of our huge-jawed ocean friends. Mix & mingle, chat to shark experts, wear an ocean creature costume & enjoy a movie with us.

We’ve teamed up with non-profit Shark Stewards to bring you a spooktacular "Sharkoween". The culmination of Sharktober - an annual celebration of Great White Sharks migrating to the Bay Area.  

There's no doubt that sharks have a bad reputation. But these beautiful creatures need our protection.

Join us for three upcoming Bay Area screenings of Come Hell or High Water: The Battle of Turkey Creek, winner of the Green Tenacity Award at the 2014 SF Green Film Festival.

Green Film Fest audiences will remember the wonderful sneak preview of Pelican Dreams as a work-in-progress screening in 2012. We're thrilled that the film is now complete and hits the big screen this month at a cinema near you!

'Sharkoween' is approaching fast, with our screening of new doc Shark Girl on October 30. Can't wait until then? We've compiled a list of shark-themed films that we hope you can really sink your teeth into:

This week, Governor Brown signed historic legislation that will ban the use of single-use plastic bags in California, the first state in the USA to do so. Why is this important? Americans use 60,000 plastic bags every five minutes, disposable bags that they throw away without much thought. But where is "away"? Where do the bags and other plastics end up, and at what cost to the environment, marine life, and human health?

To find out more, check out these illuminating films from our Festival archive:

San Francisco Green Film Festival brings together green artists from across the Bay Area, including musicians, sculptors, designers, photographers and filmmakers who are inspired by the environment.

By making Bag It (Suzan Beraza, 2010) the star of the Opening Night of the 2011 SFGFF, audiences were inspired to draw the connection between their day-to-day activities – using single use plastic bags – and the depletion of marine life in our oceans.

The award-winning documentary Bag It starts with exploring the challenge to spend a day without using a plastic bag. This light-hearted tale soon begins to unravel the complexities of the plastic bag industry, the impact that plastic production and the disposal of it has on our oceans, and how it affects human health.