Hollywood Climate Summit Marketplace

Film Selection

This program was offered to entrants of the 2025 Jackson Wild Media Awards for the chance to pitch their distribution-ready long-form films (over 22 minutes) to distributors in attendance at the Jackson Wild Summit on September 29th - October 3rd.

Love Birds

NBC News Studios, Perfect Four Productions

In 1972, young married biologists George Hunt and Molly Warner travel to a remote Channel Island off the coast of California to study western gulls. There, they make a discovery that will change the course of their lives—and echo far beyond the bounds of their research. Among the nesting birds, they find something astonishing: a significant number of same-sex female pairs raising chicks together.

Orchids: Darwin’s Conundrum

Thomas Cassar, National Film and Television School

Over 140 years after Darwin’s passing, biologist and fellow orchid-obsessive Thomas Cassar goes on a quest across continents to unravel the intimate relationship between orchids and insects. With stops in England, the Mediterranean and Central America, we follow in Darwin’s footsteps, uncovering his blunders and revealing what he got right. Be warned: anything goes in the world of orchid pollination - sex, lies and even murder.

The Invisible Mammal

Selvavision, The Wild Lens Collective

The Invisible Mammal spotlights an all-women team of scientists racing against time to save America’s bats from White-nose Syndrome, a disease that has decimated bat populations, causing up to 95% declines. Bat expert Dr. Winifred Frick proposes a potential solution, but the onset of COVID-19 brings her research to a halt. Frustrated by this delay, Dr. Frick fights back against a wave of fear and misinformation about bats, and begins to examine the connections between bats and COVID. By the time she is able to restart her research on White-nose Syndrome a year later, there is renewed urgency to find a solution.

My Blue Whale Family

Oceanic Films

Pioneering scientist Dr. Diane Gendron has dedicated her life to studying blue whales in Mexico’s Gulf of California. Over the past 35 years, she has identified more than 850 individuals, tracking them closely to understand their unique personalities, daily routines, behaviour and family dynamics. Her ground-breaking work is revealing the secret lives of these mysterious giants like never before. Diane is the Jane Goodall of whales, yet her story has yet to be told.

The American Southwest

Fin and Fur Films, Natives Outdoors, American Rivers, Northern Jaguar Project, Peregrine Fund, Glen Canyon Institute, Freshwater Illustrated, Salmonfly Project, ProNatura Noreste, Walton Foundation, Lyda Hill Philanthropies, Horizon Foundation

THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST is a wild and unforgettable journey down the mighty Colorado River. Narrated by land protector and fashion model Quannah Chasinghorse (Han Gwich’in and Sicangu/Oglala Lakota), the film beautifully showcases the region’s abundant wildlife, confronts the ecological impacts of dams and river depletion, and boldly advocates for increased water and wildlife conservation.

Trade Secret

Untitled Film Works

Trade Secret follows three unlikely allies on a mission to protect polar bears from international commercial trade. Filmed over six years across 13 countries, the film exposes the sanctioned sale of hundreds of polar bears each year on the global market. But as the investigation deepens, it uncovers a disturbing truth: those entrusted with safeguarding the species may be entangled in their continued commercialisation. The film raises urgent questions about how we protect vulnerable wildlife in a world where the lines between protection and exploitation have become blurred.

Orca - Black And White Gold

Terra Mater Studios GmbH

Today, China is building SeaWorld inspired aquariums throughout its provinces — and they all want orcas. The new pipeline for this illicit trade can be found in Russia, where local bosses run a ‘whale jail’ to catch and prepare animals for life in China’s aquariums. International outcry sparked by local activists reached all the way to the Kremlin. Putin is forced to order the release of 100 whales, tasking the catchers to figure out how to set them free.

The Granny & Fishes

A film by Maria Mavati and Ehsan Farokhi Fard with support from the Documentary and Experimental Film Center (DEFC)

They have dried up the Hamoon lagoon and blocked the water, millions of fish have dried up at the bottom of the lagoon, and everywhere you look, birds have died from lack of water. 300 villages have been evacuated and the dust storm has spread everywhere. In one of the villages, there is only one Granny who has not left her home and has been living alone for many years she does. Every day she goes to the lagoon and collects dead fish.