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Need some weekend plans? Look no further than the 2025 Colorado Environmental Film Festival (CEFF), which runs from February 21 through 23 at the Colorado School of Mines’ Green Center in Golden. More than 60 films, including feature-length documentaries, animated shorts, youth-produced films, subtitled foreign productions, and more, showcase the peril our Earth faces and the impassioned efforts to heal it, from the problematic systems and competing interests that are contributing to climate chaos to the innovative solutions developed by determined activists and organizations.
Ultimately, the lineup highlights the criticality of resiliency: for nature, for humans, for wildlife, for ecosystems, and for this place we all call home. And, given the tenuous future of environmental protections and priorities under the current administration, resiliency and hope are more vital than ever.
Check out the film schedule and buy your tickets ($30–$99 for a pass, $15 for a single screening) for the fest this weekend. Can’t make it? Not to worry. CEFF hosts an online encore February 24 through March 2, where $60 gets you access to all available films for the entire week, and $15 buys the streaming of a curated collection.
Below, five film picks that challenge the status quo, inspire activism, and capture hope, including a conversation with both the filmmaker and subject of a locally made documentary that offers a soulful look at a family healing from the trauma of Colorado’s Marshall Fire.
Half-Life of Memory: America’s Forgotten Atomic Bomb Factory (55 mins)
- Line we like: “That place should never, ever, be inhabited by human beings. They didn’t bother to look into the future and see what’s going to happen to the people coming along…”
If you live in the Denver metro area, chances are you’ve heard of the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge. Maybe you’ve even visited this swath of land northwest of the city, in Superior, to check out the roaming elk and deer. But how much of Rocky Flats’ history are you aware of? This site was once the home of a top-secret plant that manufactured plutonium parts for nuclear weapons—approximately 70,000 atomic bombs. The resulting radioactive waste that poisoned the surrounding land and water has long been the subject of controversy, and this film delves into the ongoing legacy of government coverups, investigations, protests, and continuous rare cancer occurrences in people who live downwind and downwater of the area.
The Snake & The Whale (90 mins)
- Line we like: “They are the canary in the coal mine. It’s not just saving a population of 75 whales; it’s about seeing them kind of as a poster child for the health of our planet right now.”
Journalist John Carlos Frey’s deep dive into the relationship between endangered orcas, dwindling salmon numbers, and four massive hydroelectric dams on the Snake River is chronicled in this multifaceted documentary. Thoughtfully chosen footage and detailed sourcing reveals the alarming power tactics threatening the local Chinook salmon, which are the primary food source for the endangered Southern Resident killer whale population in the Pacific Northwest. Through report analysis and extensive interviews with key players, including orca scientists, environmentalists, indigenous people with spiritual connections to the orcas, the invested power corporation, a federal engineer-turned-activist who helped build the dams before the impacts were known—and even going so far as to knock on the door of a leading congresswoman known for shutting the issue down—Frey paints a compelling picture of the way political and profit agendas are contributing to the looming extinction of these majestic animals.
Eating the Future (49 mins)
- Line we like: “…looking toward the light is an equal part of trying to change things when you’re working in darkness; otherwise, the negativity takes over.”
In this disturbing look at the eco-fallout from the world’s agricultural food systems, a narrator—the composite of several investigators interviewed for this film—takes the viewer on a journey into the inhumane, environmentally destructive farming techniques that yield the meat, eggs, and produce that feed us. The film flips between interviews with experts, visits to organic, sustainable farms and food kitchens, and snippets from secretive missions to the underbelly of massive livestock operations and slaughterhouses. Besides the animal welfare component, the narrative thread examines the toll that animal products take on the health of our atmosphere, land, forests, and, yes, human population. The upshot? We can—and must—do a better job producing our food, from eating less meat to farming in a cleaner, more compassionate, more regenerative way, before the system is too broken to repair.
Green Superheroes 2030 (80 mins)
- Line we like: “Your impact doesn’t have to be super large to start off, because there isn’t a single person who can singlehandedly solve climate change.”
This uplifting spotlight on the next generation explains the efforts of 10 courageous kids, ages five through 17, whose environmental passion, curiosity, and genuine concern for our deteriorating planet has led them to the forefront of the fight to slow climate change, reduce waste, conserve wildlife, restore forests, develop sustainable food strategies, and more. These young leaders have founded nonprofits, led community initiatives, spread their messages through media, inspired their peers, and employed an impressive range of entrepreneurial, scientific, and creative skills to dig into the root causes of environmental distress—and, ultimately, to develop innovative solutions to these problems in their quest to meet ambitious climate standards by 2030.
Way the Wind Blows (18 mins)
- Line we like: “Whenever I come here, what makes me happy is the grass. It’s already growing, and it’s all green.”
In filmmaker Megan Sweeney’s first official foray into documentary-style filming, she poignantly captures one family’s journey of healing as they navigate the aftermath of the devastating Marshall Fire that ripped through Louisville and Superior on December 30, 2021. The costliest wildfire in Colorado’s history (amassing $2 billion worth of damage), the wind-driven blaze destroyed more than 1,000 homes and 30 commercial buildings, forced more than 35,000 evacuations, and claimed two lives. The camera follows Heather Szucs and her family (including two young daughters), who lost their home in the fire, as they tackle the seemingly insurmountable tasks of processing, recovering, rebuilding, and forging forward with their lives. Although snippets of real-time footage punctuate the visual arc, the film focuses on the post-disaster journey, from sifting through the rubble to securing rebuild permits to breaking ground on a new, fire-wise house. The prevailing theme: resilience.
Recently, 5280 caught up with Sweeney and Szucs to chat about making the film.
Editor’s note: The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
5280: This is obviously a very personal, sensitive situation. Why did you decide to share it?
Heather Szucs: I don’t know why I said yes. I guess, to me, it doesn’t make sense to say no. At that moment, I was feeling the support of the community very heavily, and I wanted to make sure that got out there.
Megan Sweeney: It takes brave people like that. Otherwise, nothing would be shared in the world; we wouldn’t learn what the experience was like or help spread empathy. We need people like Heather to volunteer themselves.
This film is more about the winding, emotional recovery than the nitty-gritty numbers and facts of the fire. Was that an intentional approach?
Sweeney: It’s really great that there are films out there that are about the fire, that have that information in them. I like seeing all perspectives. I definitely didn’t want to do a film about the fire. I more wanted to humanize what happened, for it to be a story about people and maybe even something people can relate to if they went through something similar. I hope that they can use Heather and her daughters as inspiration. I wanted it to be about the human experience.
How did you piece it all together?
Sweeney: I love being out there and interacting with people and filming. Putting the story together is hard; I’m not even sure how it all comes together, but I do really enjoy the process. I have to just trust that it’ll all kind of settle where it’s supposed to while working hard. I really like both filming and editing—wearing a lot of the hats. I think about the timeline when you’re editing as a three-dimensional puzzle. You film things at different times; I didn’t necessarily want to start at the beginning and end at the end and be too literal. So the last shot is still in the ashes and the rubble, and then in the credits you see Heather’s rebuilt home. I was trying to be maybe a little more metaphorical. I think I’m feeling like: Did I do everything justice? Did I include everything that needed to be included? I worry about that. There are so many stories. Everyone has their own story from the same event we all collectively experienced together.
It sounds like the town really stepped up during the aftermath—maybe a little light in the darkness?
Szucs: It was unbelievable. We’d have dinner sent home every Tuesday night. There was a pod at the school that had clothing and shoes. It was nice to not have to worry about spending money on those things at that moment. That really mattered. Restaurants were giving us free dinners. Jewelry stores were cleaning jewelry. There was a kid gathering stuffed animals. My next Christmas was completely supplied by several different groups.
Sweeney: The film is just a glimpse. There’s so much more I wish I could include. There are so many pieces of the experience that I don’t even know, that Heather went through. Because I wasn’t there. But the community is a big piece.
How did you deal with being exhausted, overwhelmed, and overstimulated when you faced so many decisions and hoops around rebuilding—both metaphorically and physically?
Szucs: I have a notebook—a regular spiral notebook—that I kept every piece of info in. I carried it everywhere with me, every time I needed to do something, every number I needed to figure out, because it was a juggle of, How am I going to pay to build a house when I’m $400,000 short? Everything that needed to be known, I knew I wasn’t going to remember, so I wrote it in that notebook. And I still refer to that notebook here and there.
What was the hardest part of the filmmaking process?
Sweeney: The first time someone asked me that question, my immediate response was: going through body cam footage. Even though I was so close, a mile away, I didn’t realize what the [police] experience was. There are so many houses for them to knock on doors; I think it was a miracle so many people are OK. That was really hard and shocking. I hadn’t [filmed] anything that’s a traumatic, sad experience…. It’s hard to know how to approach it and how to tell that story.
Szucs: To be honest, none of the [film] was hard compared to what I was doing. The hardest part, because Megan couldn’t be there all the time, was knowing what we needed to film. There were a couple times where I took video in the car with the girls getting our permits. There was a video we didn’t include of me taking my first box into the [new] house. Scheduling was probably the hardest part, but that’s really minor compared to the other stuff. Maybe wrapping my head around how the movie is going to be [received]. We talked a lot about what people would think of the movie.
What do you want people to take away from this after the credits roll?
Szucs: That the humanity of being broken is OK. And, there’s hope. I hope that people, especially those who go through this type of thing, can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Because it’s a long tunnel. And…the healthiness of kids within the trauma. I hope [viewers] get to see that the kids are not going to be destroyed by this. It might be a little hiccup. My younger one—she still has nights. The other night, she comes out of bed, and says, “Mom, I’m scared again.” And I lie down with her and talk about why it’ll never happen again.
The 2025 Colorado Environmental Film Festival (CEFF) runs from February 21 through 23 at the Colorado School of Mines’ Green Center in Golden. Check out the film schedule and buy your tickets ($30–$99 for a pass, $15 for a single screening) for the fest this weekend. The online encore airs February 24 through March 2, where $60 gets you access to all available films for the entire week, and $15 buys the streaming of a curated collection.
