Still upholding its image of prestige, glamour, and exceptionalism in cinema, the Cannes Film Festival this year has spotlighted sustainability and human relationships with the planet. Through festival initiatives and the films shown, a subtle but noticeable development has emerged: broad ecological themes are becoming integrated into the narratives on screen and into the operational ethos of both the festival and the film industry.
Since 2021, the Festival de Cannes has continued to deepen its commitment to sustainable practices, recently solidified by its Sustainability Policy, issued in March 2025. In recent years, the festival has rolled out initiatives to reduce carbon emissions, eliminate single-use plastic water bottles, adopt a 100% electric fleet of official vehicles, and even redesign the iconic red carpet to save 1,400kg of material.
By collaborating with partners to minimize the environmental footprint of the event itself, the festival aims to continue pursuing reductions in pollution and waste.
The Marché du Film has also been continuing its impACT program, highlighting films and projects that prioritize environmental, social, and ethical concerns. This May, several filmmakers brought environmental justice and human relationships with nature to the forefront of their storytelling. Whether through urgent explorations of ecological devastation, subtle critiques of development projects, or intimate portrayals of marginalized communities navigating climate and social crises, Cannes has become not only a stage for cinematic dreams and imagination but also a mirror reflecting society’s deeper anxieties about the planet’s future.
Listed below are four of the most resonant films from this year’s festival that examine our relationship with the environment, each offering a unique lens through which to reflect on sustainability, resilience, and justice.
Robin Petré, Only on Earth
Set in Galicia, Spain — one of Europe’s most wildfire-prone regions — during the hottest and driest summer on record, the documentary film Only on Earth offers an intimate, multi-faceted portrait of four individuals: a cowboy, a veterinarian, a firefighter, and a farming family, all bound by their relationships with animals.
Danish filmmaker and artist Robin Petré, known for her work on the coexistence of humans, animals, and the natural world, documents the community’s efforts to protect their homes, livelihoods, and ecosystems in the face of escalating climate disaster. The film includes the perspective of animals, particularly those of the native wild horses that play a vital role in mitigating wildfire damage, emphasizing the interdependence of life under environmental stress.
Avoiding sensationalism, Petré crafts a meditative narrative that focuses on transparent representation of everyday resilience and the fragile balance between human traditions and the environment. Premiered at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival in February 2025, the film was nominated for both the Berlinale Documentary Film Award and the Grand Prize for Best Film, and later won the Eurimages Co-Production Development Award in March.
With its grounded, multi-species lens, Only on Earth reflects on the centuries-long tradition of harmonious living between humans and horses in a shared land, and the mutual benefit they provide to one another. Ultimately, the director hopes the film “should encourage people to think deeply about how we’re dealing with wildlife and impacting nature, and to consider how we could stand together to change the course of the future for the better.”
Pedro Pinho, I Only Rest in the Storm
Featured in the “Un Certain Regard,” this Portuguese drama traces an environmental engineer working in a West African metropolis on a road-building project for an NGO. Beginning as a story of development, the film gradually unfolds into a sharp critique of neocolonialism.
“At [the film’s] heart lies the never-ending ‘encounter between Europe and Africa,” says Pinho; this sits in conjunction with ecological disruption and an unsettling reality of well-meaning sustainability work — “beyond economic ambition, [the road] ultimately remains a rupture scar in a territory that resists being tamed,” the director adds.
Pinho’s film, featuring Sérgio Coragem as Sérgio, transpires more than the obvious political reality of the altruistic work of NGOs that the protagonist has become involved with. By digging into the personal tension of Sérgio’s Western identity and the local relationships he forms, the cultural lines to which he is somewhat clueless elucidate further the neo-imperialist relationship between historic master and subject peoples.
The film exposes this to question whether sustainability projects exported from the Global North can ever be disentangled from the power structures that undermine them, and whether even ecological repair may reproduce the very systems of control it seeks to redress.
Óliver Laxe, Sirât (After)
Premiering in the main competition at Cannes, Óliver Laxe’s last film, Sirât, is a spiritual odyssey set in a near-apocalyptic future. A father with his son crosses the Sahara in search of his lost daughter, last seen at a rave in Morocco. The journey becomes a test of character and survival, set against a crumbling world; as the father and son traverse a harsh desert landscape, radio broadcasts speak of wars, resource depletion, and diplomatic collapse, offering a bleak reflection of a planet, our planet, heading towards ruin.
Notable for its cinematography, “themes of physical wandering, borders, and introspection punctuate the work of Tarkovski’s heir,” wrote editor at Festival de Cannes Benoit Pavan, where the desert functions to represent the literal physical challenge it imposes and alludes to internal exile as a symptom of ecological and social decay.
Although not explicitly environmental, Sirât indicts the forces — consumerism, disconnection, and spiritual loss — driving the world through its institutions, politics, and culture toward an apocalyptic end.
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Francesco Sossai, Le città di pianura (The Last One for the Road)
One of two certified Green Films featured at Cannes 2025, Sossai’s Le cittá di pianura underscores its commitment to sustainable filmmaking practices. Shot on 16mm film across various locations in the Veneto region, including Sedico, Feltre, Padua, Chioggia, and the Brion Memorial in Altivole, the film embraces environmentally conscious production methods but also reflects on the interplay between human development and natural landscapes.
The narrative follows the middle-aged Carlobianchi and Doriano, who, in their quest for a final drink, encounter Giulio, a diffident architecture student. Through the “introspective road movie,” the trio’s trip through the Venetian plains shines on intergenerational exchange and connection — discussed further in this interview with Sossai.
While the film does not overtly address environmental issues, its localised setting and character dynamics subtly comment on the encroachment of modernity on traditional and natural spaces. The characters’ interactions and the evolving landscapes they traverse invite viewers to reflect on the balance between progress and preservation.
Further Advances
Two documentary shorts expanded the reach of sustainability storytelling beyond the Cannes Competition. Behind the Trees, by The Clean Planet Foundation, was a 2024 winner at the Cannes World Film Festival. It chronicles Scotland’s “Trees for Life” rewilding initiative, a charity that has seen over two million trees planted in the last 30 years. Garnering several other accolades, this film is a hopeful and practical testament to how environmental repair is possible through collective dedication.
Similarly, Healthy Seas’ Journey to Ithaca documents the largest marine clean-up of the charity in Greece, in which 76 tons of litter were removed from the sea. With ten years of abandoned waste cleaned up within a week, the documentary serves to remind us that when communities mobilize toward tangible solutions, past environmental ignorance can be resolved.
These films represent an interrogation of sustainability from varied cultural and aesthetic angles, and the improving sustainability practices in filmmaking.
Together, they show a mosaic of contemporary sustainability concerns, with both global and regional perspectives. As Cannes and other festivals become more attuned to these concerns, the urgency of ecological and related social issues will become more visible in screen narratives and shape a pensive cinematic language about the human-nature interconnection.
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed here by the authors are their own, not those of impakter.com — Cover Photo Credit: @ Mathilde Petit / Festival de Cannes.
