Spring’s Back… and so is Inheritance!
Our environmental festival, brought to you by our friends at NVTV in Belfast, is back for a Spring edition this month.
Inheritance is a vibrant celebration of cinematic storytelling, that brings together powerful voices from around the world. Featuring a diverse lineup of international short documentaries, animations, experimental videos and narrative films, the festival offers a rich tapestry of perspectives on the environmental challenges facing our planet. From innovative visual storytelling to deeply personal accounts of climate impact, each work invites audiences to engage, reflect, and act. This festival is not just a celebration of film—it’s a call to awareness and global solidarity for a more sustainable future.
Every evening from Sunday 18th to Saturday 24th May, 6pm, with repeats from Sunday 25th to Saturday 31st at the same time.
Sunday 18th & 25th
EPISODE 1
A Farm Out West by Oisin McKeogh & Maiya Rice
4:31, Ireland
Having lived in rural West Ireland for the over thirty years, organic grower Jim Cronin has developed a smallholding focusing on sustainability and giving back to nature.
Trashed by Marie Geert
3:23, Denmark
A girl sets out to remove plastic from the ocean but accidentally mistakes a poisonous jellyfish for a plastic bag and goes on a hallucinating trip, revealing how human waste and actions affects marine life. Waking up in a hospital she is faced with the exact problem that put her there in the first place and the reality that merely by being ill she contributes to the problem herself.
Coastguards by Alistair Debling
18:22, UK
Shot on iPhone, 16mm film and a Mavic drone, Coastguards surveys ten miles of English coastline across 500 years, revealing a delicate ecology shaped by impacting waves of architecture, migration and militarisation. As changing climates disrupt migratory patterns along the English Channel, categories of native and invasive are thrown into question: when new arrivals land, who is deemed a threat and who is offered sanctuary?
Ever-Changing Clouds, Like My Ever-Changing Life by Qiang Chen
29:50, US
Beside the clouds, a city like an abyss, detached from the ground but not from time and impermanence. After graduation, four children set off on their own paths, each branching into their unique journeys and each experiencing their own profound changes. Life hangs by a thread, rising and falling like dust, where to seek those beautiful bygone days? Meetings are fleeting, with no promise of a next time, where then to seek the beauty of endurance?
Monday 19th & 26th
EPISODE 2
People Growing Together by Claudia Romano
18:30, US
A short documentary that explores the transformative power of urban gardening in Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts. Through interviews with community gardeners, nonprofit leaders, a city employee, and an urban planning professor, the film delves into how urban gardens function as vital spaces for social connection and food justice.
The Old Man and The Robot by Callum Scott-Dyson
10:00, Republic of Korea
In a post-apocalyptic future, an aging man struggles to survive alone on a desolate Earth. As his food supply dwindles, he realizes his time is running out. One day, while scavenging the wasteland, he stumbles upon a broken, malfunctioning robot. Against the odds, the two form an unlikely bond and work together to find a way to survive in this harsh, unforgiving world.
Maturation Station by Melissa Mabesoone
25:00, Belgium
The daily routine of shrimp farmer Theo comes under pressure during the rehearsals for an important conference on blue economy. Together with her colleagues she tries to reenact how shrimp farmers use the eyestalk removal technique, a technique that turns female shrimp into blind reproduction machines. As she looks after the child of her sister, she begins to question her own agency. More and more she dives towards the perspective of the shrimp. Maturation Station is a humorous and critical dramedy. A shrimp cocktail on care, reproduction and work-life balance through a hydro-feminist lens.
Tuesday 20th & 27th
EPISODE 3
Pelagic Eye by Osker Carmichael
14:59, UK
Pelagic Eye invites the audience on a voyage into a deep blue escape. Three timelines follow the journey of a sailor, free diver and surfer into an ethereal dimension. The film explores the idea of escapism through the ocean, playing with the translucent lines between the physical world and fiction.
New World, New Trace by Žoel Kastelic
9:55, Slovenia
The story takes place at a time when space travel is no longer an obstacle. Humanity has discovered a new habitable planet. But did humanity learn anything from its experience on Earth, and will leave a not so destructive trace on a new planet? Or will the greed soon rule our new planet, which will force us to search for a new world again? Those questions are asked through the intertwining stories of an astronaut from Earth, and the inhabitants of the planet the astronaut is travelling to.
Flamingo by Akanksha Sood Singh
33:38, India
Amit Kumar, a PhD scholar, has one pet peeve: the humans of the National Capital Region of Delhi are completely ignorant to the existence of a year-round bird neighbor: the Greater Flamingo. As Delhi and its satellite cities and suburbs hurtle towards almost-apocalyptic levels of urbanization –– usurped, encroached lands and smokey, blustering air –– Dr. Kumar feels an added urgency to illustrate to locals how the Greater Flamingo isn’t a migratory guest, who could easily alter routes and stopover elsewhere in cleaner, greener pastures, but one of their own, a fragile species who is choking under the weight of hyper-industrialization and climate change. This is their home too, and being neither recognized as native, nor protected as part of region’s once-ample flora and fauna, the threat to the flamingo has never been greater.
Wednesday 21st & 28th
EPISODE 4
Orange by Nóra Horváth
15:00, Romania
Orange is a witchy old woman. She makes medicine from herbs to help the local villagers. But the silence of her hut and her herb-scented life are disturbed by the owner of the field she lives on.
Shorts from the Box: Modern Times by Géza M. Tóth
8:15, Hungary
Let’s think outside of the box! The last blue-headed matchstick left in an old matchbox pops out and goes on its journey. After three short adventures it always ends up in the same place, it returns to the same box, but never in the same way. The trilogy is a tribute to Chaplin’s classic with its style of object-animated burlesque.
Denmo – Himalayan Brown Bear by Akanksha Sood Singh
38:58, India
In the rarefied heights of the western Himalayas, an ancient creature that has featured in folklore and fever dreams for centuries, still prowls. The Brown Bear, or Ursus arctos isabellinus, was here before human settlements, villages, or electrified and militarized border fences arrived. Yet, today humans and the bears find themselves caught in an uneasy truce, a hostility over territory that doesn’t bode well for either species. Niazul Hassan Khan is a young wildlife scholar, a local who has known displacement from a troubled home too. He has returned to his community in Drass, Kargil to understand the Brown Bear, and broker peace between the animals and his people. As climate change hastens the glacial melt, and shortens winters, wreaking havoc on mountain communities, Niaz and his guide trek through the mountains searching for answers and a lasting possibility of survival for the land, its people, and the bear.
Thursday 22nd & 29th
EPISODE 5
The Hunchback and the Swan by Dotty Kultys
9:35, UK
A classic folk tale of friendship and belonging, narrated by UK’s First Storytelling Laureate — Taffy Thomas, MBE. The Hunchback has no friends in the village, but his friends are the animals of the forest. When he suddenly disappears, it’s up to the Weasel, the Rabbit, the Badger, the Fox, the Robin and the Wren to save the day. They will definitely need some help — and perhaps even some magic!
The Golden Guardian by Tané Kashanari
11:00, Guatemala
A sleepy vacationer rests leisurely on a canoe when he catches a glimpse of a bright, magical fish. Captivated by its beauty, he will chase it throughout the lagoon, reuniting with himself in its waters.
Banda, an Odyssey on Indonesia’s Forgotten Islands by Philippe Mistral & Emilie Rozand
39:00, France
Philippe, an environmental specialist, and Laura, an oceanographer, decide to explore the Banda Sea, on the fringes of Indonesia. In this little-known part of the world, countless unspoilt islands dot a vast region with one of the richest coral reefs on the planet. Their odyssey leads them to surprising discoveries in the heart of an exceptional natural environment and to meet the last nomadic fishermen, the Bajau, who ply the Banda Sea. How much longer will this original place be preserved?
Friday 23rd & 30th
EPISODE 6
One by one, the lights go out by Kathy Raftery
6:30, Ireland
As the filmmaker’s 87-year-old father steps away from the land he has tended for decades, the film captures the quiet end of an era for a family farm steeped in history and memory. Narrated by the acclaimed Irish writer Michael Harding and inspired by his essay, the story is a tender meditation on legacy, loss and the passage of time.
Over the clouds by Mahdi Barqzadegan
5:52, Iran
A kite does not fly at high altitudes so as not to be damaged by strong winds. He is lonely and has a monotonous life. The storm tears his thread and takes him deep into the sky. There, the kite realizes that even though it may get hurt, life as a kite is worth it.
Forest for the Fires by Everett Bumstead
44:34, Canada
An allegory contemplating the nuances of forest stewardship and the interconnectedness of monoculture tree farms with Canada’s current wildfire crisis.
Saturday 24th & 31st
EPISODE 7
Sea Silk by Isobel Wilson, Hannah Roza Fisher & Eleonora Di Massimo
5:43, UK
A story of traditions being passed down through generations of women. How unique crafts are kept alive through song and made extraordinary by the women who preserve them.
Trash Woman by Ojok Odong
18:48, Uganda
A garbage collector, once a skilled soldier, struggles to escape her past as she faces ongoing harassment from a group of thugs. When her male friend’s involvement results in a grave injury, her training resurfaces, turning the tables and setting the stage for a climactic showdown against her tormentors.
Atrahasis by Shawna-Marie Walker
10:55, US
A story that revolves around a couple living in close proximity to an ocean that is sadly succumbing to increasing pollution levels.
Heal The Land by Tom Francome & Hayley Smith
24:58, UK
Filmed exclusively on site at Heal Somerset, this documentary explores how Heal Rewilding is embarking on an ambitious mission to transform a former, unproductive livestock farm into a resilient haven for wildlife recovery. As the charity enters its second year on the farm in 2024, the film charts its dramatic challenges, makes remarkable discoveries and camera traps reveal some astounding new species arrivals, demonstrating that when you give nature space, it really can begin to bounce back.
