The Bohemian Environmental Justice Film Festival

The Bohemian Environmental Justice Film Festival

The Bohemian Football Club announces a unique film festival that will take place in historic Dalymount Park this September. Football teams from around Europe will travel to Dublin to attend the festival and launch a new football climate justice project.

The Bohemian Environmental Justice Film Festival (BEFF) will be the first festival focused on the stories of people and communities on the front lines of the fight against environmental catastrophe. There is an increasing awareness of the intersection between people’s lives and the consequences of environmental breakdown. Around the world, filmmakers are telling the story of struggle and survival in the face of the converging environmental crises we face. 

However, until now, there is no signature festival focused on platforming and celebrating these films of courage, solidarity, hope and anguish in the age of the Anthropocene and biodiversity collapse. BEFF will be an outdoor film festival held at Dalymount Park on the northside of Dublin between the 8^th and the 11^th of September 2022. The festival will bring together Irish and international filmmakers, storytellers, activists, and decision-makers for a special weekend of screenings and events that will advance understanding of the environmental injustices faced by communities in Ireland and worldwide and the prospects for reparation.

In 2021, Bohemians became the first football club in the world to initiate a strand of work on climate justice. This work aims to bring vital messages about climate change and climate action to football fans and the broader community in an engaging and empowering manner. The film festival will continue this work, and through new partnerships it enables the work of community engagement to become more ambitious in scope.

In addition, Bohemian Football Club will welcome football clubs from around Europe to the film festival as a new climate justice project gets underway. Bohemian FC worked with the European Football for Development Network to develop the Erasmus+Sport project, which also includes Real Betis (Spain), FC Twente (the Netherlands), Ferencvárosi FC (Hungary), Werder Bremen and St Pauli (Germany), Randers FC (Denmark), the Spanish national league foundation and the Irish think tank TASC. The project will explore what clubs can do to reduce their own environmental footprint and support their fans and communities in the climate transition. Work with UN entities and NGOs to promote children’s environmental rights will also be carried.

“We began working on climate justice at Bohemian Football Club because we recognised that the climate crisis was the single greatest challenge facing our fans, our community, and the world today. We also realise that both the impacts and the societal changes necessary to avoid the crisis come with risks of hardship and injustice for people living in situations of poverty or marginalisation. The world is waking up to the need to act on the climate crisis but there is still a lack of understanding as to the central importance of fairness and justice in delivering effective solutions. The Bohemian Environmental Justice Film Festival, and our partnership with Oatly, allow us to shine a light on the importance of ensuring that that action is fair and inclusive of all people.”

Seán McCabe, Bohemian’s Climate Justice Officer