The Portland EcoFilm Festival's Global Ecological Cinema Podcast

Fernando Valencia Saire is a talented voice actor and movie lover from Peru. Together with his son, Dylan, Fernando is on a quest to dub Disney's THE LION KING into Quechua, his mother tongue and the most spoken Indigenous language in the Americas. Augusto Zegarra's heartwarming and beautifully crafted documentary, RUNA SIMI, follows Fernando and Dylan through the cities, villages, mountains, and...

Renowned Japanese film, literature, and theater scholar Dr. Timothy Iles joins us to discuss ecological aspects of WOMAN IN THE DUNES and Kōbō Abe's expansive ecological imagination beyond this novel and film. Kōbō Abe wrote WOMAN IN THE DUNES beginning in about 1960. It was published as a novel in 1962 to international acclaim, establishing him as a major writer. Kōbō Abe’s primary cinematic coll...

On this episode of the Global Ecological Cinema Podcast from the Portland EcoFilm Festival , we talk with David Bim, whose film, TO THE WEST, IN ZAPATA (AL OESTE EN ZAPATA), earned our festival’s 2026 Black Merlin Grand Prize. The cinematic, feature-length documentary tells a deeply human story about a family's life and love in the most remote part of Cuba at the height of Covid-19. Presented in s...

When Renata Mireilles and David Vêluz prepared to make a feature-length documentary about Indigenous childhood in Brazil, they did so not with a script in hand and cameras pointed, eagerly. Instead, they approached the exploration with open hearts and minds, asking the Guarani Kaiowá, Guarani Ñandeva, Baniwa, and Khisêtjê peoples, “What would you like to celebrate about the ways you raise your chi...

DISTANCE TO THE MOON is a stop-motion animation film about X, who discovers a ladder that stretches infinitely into space and goes on a journey that isn't just physical. He traverses solitude, memory, grief, and hope, encountering various meaningful beings along the way. For this episode, we spoke with the film's writer and co-director, Sacha Kyle, and composer, Giles Lamb. We discussed finding in...

We speak with Antoine Chapon, a French filmmaker who collaborated with former residents of Damascus, Syriah's Basateen al-Razi neighborhood to share their memories and perspectives, and reimagine the future of the land they once called home. Antoine's film, AL BASATEEN (THE ORCHARDS) is an official selection in our 2026 festival. Until recently, Basateen al-Razi was home to some of the oldest orch...

AKABABURU: EXPRESSION OF ASTONISHMENT is a short film from Colombia’s Karmata Rua Indigenous Reservation, presented primarily in the Emberá Chami language. It reimagines the myth of Kiraparamia, a woman who is punished by the gods for laughing at her husband. Through stop motion animation and live action, we see this legend come to life, framed by the experiences and connection of two young women...

For our very first episode, we focus on Agnès Varda's beloved documentary, THE GLEANERS AND I. Released in the year 2000, this warm, meandering masterpiece, which opened our 2026 festival , explores the act of gleaning, not only as collecting food that would otherwise go to waste, but as a multifaceted means of survival, expression, ecological responsibility, and belonging.  Our featured guest is...