• The Green Film Lab is a workshop for people working in cinema who want to apply a green protocol to their films.
• Participants identified the most critical environmental aspects of their own projects and then found solutions.
• Making a sustainable film also means paying attention to content.

Three days of advanced training. TorinoFilmLab brought the Green Film Lab to Turin – an international project dedicated to film producers who want to work sustainably. Organised together with Green Film – Trentino Film Commission and with the support of Creative Europe – MEDIA Sub-programme of the European Union, the workshop was an opportunity to actively work on the environmental impact that films can generate. All with the aim of applying a green protocol in the future and obtaining a certification.

The working experience was immersive. The participants (twenty-four in total, twelve from Italy and twelve from the rest of the world) had the opportunity to share their own journeys and explain why today environmental sustainability is a key issue in cinema too. Some say they are here because sustainability should not be an obligation, but something to engage with – crucial almost from a philosophical standpoint – while others stress that sustainability in production also runs through sustainability in content, that is, in the stories told.

The workshop opens with a general quiz held by Lucie Trémolières, a writer and director specialising in eco-storytelling, to gauge how much participants already know about the topic. The point is to break the ice, but above all to kick off discussion within the groups – even if only to establish which stage in a smartphone's life cycle emits the most carbon dioxide. Spoiler: manufacturing.

Working towards a sustainable film

What is interesting is that at a certain point the workshop participants are split into two groups. Two groups, two tutors: Dörte Schneider Garcia, an expert assistant director and sustainability consultant, and Louise Marie Smith, founder of Neptune Environmental Solutions, specialising in environmental management systems and sustainable practices for the high-end film and TV drama industry.

The two groups are in turn subdivided into three smaller groups to work on individual projects. Within each of the three groups there are four people: two already involved in the project (the producer and the director), and two working on it for the first time (a producer and a sustainability consultant). The first part of the work is straightforward: look at the project, analyse it, and together identify the SWOT – Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats – along with all the critical environmental aspects needed to define a shared strategy. No solutions yet; for now the task is simply to define the issues and receive feedback from the tutor and the other participants to reinforce certain ideas, offer suggestions, or add context.

Before turning to solutions, there is a masterclass on case studies – one that perfectly illustrates the value of the training gained at the Green Film Lab. Everything follows a precise logic in which group work is followed by a lesson, then more group work, then another lesson. The case studies chart the paradigm shift and how productions have transformed and reduced their environmental impact. There are films that have replaced conventional lighting with LED, saving 10,000 dollars in electricity costs, and others that have swapped 243 litres of diesel for HVO (Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil), a high-quality renewable biofuel produced from plant and animal waste, capable of reducing carbon emissions by 90 per cent compared to conventional diesel.

"Lots of inspirational examples, even if every project has its own specifics," recalls Giovanni Pompili, Head of Studies at Green Film Lab. "On top of that," he adds, "what we try to do is use props and set materials that can be repurposed – so we've found ourselves donating them to local communities, schools or municipalities, where they sometimes go on to form the basis of museum or educational spaces. Alternatively, you can involve the crew in an activity that benefits the local area. For instance, if you were shooting a film in a coastal location, one activity might be to organise a beach clean. An interesting area," Giovanni concludes, "is food and catering. Imposing a vegetarian menu doesn't work – but what you can do is adopt a reverse psychology approach. Instead of offering a meat-based menu and asking how many people are vegetarian, the idea is to offer a vegetarian menu and ask who wants meat. The goal is to make meat-eaters take an active role and, in a sense, give them responsibility for their choice."

Sustainability lies in the content too

Also speaking at the Green Film Lab was Luca Ferrario, Director of Trentino Film Commission and founder of Green Film – a tool developed to promote sustainability in audiovisual productions and to guide producers towards certification. "What we value most, and what becomes fundamental to obtaining certification, is crew involvement and communication with heads of department. And by crew involvement I mean keeping them informed about what is being done and why – not informally, but through a kick-off meeting where a plan is chosen and communicated to everyone. You rarely go back, because environmental sustainability brings economic sustainability along with it. And that's plain for everyone to see."

Sustainability – a term that is too broad and often overused, yet also the most common and accessible – is a concept that in cinema must also flow through content, not just form. Two directors we met agree on this. For director and producer Maria Giménez Cavallo, already assistant director to Abdellatif Kechiche and Pietro Marcello, humans are not at the centre of the narrative. In her second feature, Piggy Baby, the focus is entirely on Mino, a piglet who becomes a family's new pet. "In the film," the director tells us, "I'd like to have Mino's point of view – the story should begin from ground level, with a camera that runs. I'd like lots of close-ups of Mino. It's not a way of removing humans, but of making it clear that we are all aligned and intertwined."

The project by Tommaso Pitta, director of The Hottest Summer In History, also reveals a new interest in content. "This anthology film – divided into five stories," the director tells us, "is set during an extremely hot summer, the hottest summer in history. A kind of metaphor that is both literal and figurative, in the sense that we are living through one of the most confused and tormented moments in history. I interpret the decline of reason as something closely tied to the collective terror of being powerless in the face of climate change. Each story in the film addresses one aspect of the climate crisis, and one of them even touches on the idea of it being perceived as a problem for the privileged. When it shouldn't be, right?"