2026 • USA • 6 min • Joe Brown

Michigan Premiere

This short documentary tells the story of sandhill cranes in America.

2026 • USA • 27 min • David Andrew Busse

Filmmaker in Attendance, Staff Pick

The bank swallow looks unremarkable, but it lives in a sensory world so different from our own that it might as well be another universe. Filmed with sweeping beauty and intimate detail, the film follows the colony through a season of triumph and loss.

2026 • USA • 15 min • Armin Korsos

Michigan Premiere

On a small Caribbean island, the native Brown Booby is disappearing, not from climate change but from feral cats people brought generations ago. Chicago-based filmmaker Armin Korsos follows the stories of the conservationists caught between action and inaction, asking when human-caused damage becomes our responsibility to fix, and what it means if we choose not to.

2026 • USA • 19 min • Josh Heese

Filmmaker in Attendance, World Premiere, Staff Pick

Carving a Legacy follows Luke Costilow, an award-winning duck decoy carver and wildlife conservationist, and the often-overlooked role of hunters as stewards of the environment.

2026 • USA • 3 min • Nick & Chris Loud

Filmmaker in Attendance, Subject in Attendance, Michigan Premiere, World Premiere, Staff Pick

This portrait of Northern Michigan artist and musician Dana Falconberry follows her from inspiration to finished piece as she combines paint and traditional chain-stitching to create a multi-layered scene.

2026 • USA • 15 min • Taliesin Black-Brown

Staff Pick, Family Friendly, Michigan Premiere

Listen is a sensory immersion that dissolves the boundaries between us and the more-than-human world. It follows Alaskan author Hank Lentfer as he records forgotten sounds of the natural world and cares for his mother with dementia.

2026 • USA • 60 min • Daniel Larson

Filmmaker in Attendance, Michigan Premiere

Lake Michigan’s Green Bay is the world’s largest freshwater estuary, where the warm, nutrient-rich water of the Lower Fox River mixes with the cool water of the lake, creating an aquatic environment that supports a productive fishery, wetlands and a migratory flyway. The film turns to the people who care for this world of fish and birds as they seek understanding and look for solutions.

2025 • USA • 4 min • Bonnie Willison & Bijit Khadka

Filmmaker in Attendance, Family Friendly

For four decades, volunteers with the Wisconsin Society for Ornithology have visited Wisconsin’s Baraboo Hills before dawn, gently netting and banding birds one by one. Year after year, the data adds up to something bigger - a long-term window into how bird populations are shifting across the country.