The Bozcaada International Ecological Documentary Festival returns to the Turkish Aegean island for its 13th edition from 7 to 11 October 2026, running under the line «In spite of everything, all together». BIFED has described itself since its founding as «local, small, slow», and its organisers still measure the festival by the connections it makes between places and the struggles that occupy them.
This year the programme gathers around accountability. Organisers place the term among the fundamental questions of ecological justice, extending it well past its legal and administrative senses. The festival’s statement asks who holds a say over shared living spaces and who carries the economic and social cost of ecological destruction.
Behind that emphasis lies an observation about distribution. Communities that contributed least to the climate crisis are frequently the ones living closest to its consequences, among them displaced people, small producers and indigenous populations, while corporations, states and international institutions seldom answer for the ecological and social harm they generate.
Ecology at BIFED has never been confined to the conservation of nature. Labour, inequality, exploitation and forced migration sit inside its remit as squarely as water and soil do, on the grounds that nothing constituting life stands independent of the rest. The selection policy follows from this. Organisers look for documentaries that search out causes, make the invisible visible and draw links between distant geographies, and they say they value films opening space for resistance and solidarity above an aesthetic of disaster.
The statement is candid about the conditions under which this edition arrives. «This year has not been an easy one for BIFED financially», organisers write, adding that the end of significant support may leave the festival in one of the hardest periods of its history. Their answer is the volunteer effort and island hospitality that have carried the event since 2014. «For us, hope is not believing that everything will be fine; it is continuing to act together, in spite of everything.»
Alongside the screenings, the programme carries talks, workshops, exhibitions and masterclasses, with directors, academics, activists and farmers brought to the same table. BIFED has also begun sharing its model beyond Bozcaada, extending gatherings to Gökçeada and the South Marmara Islands in Türkiye and onward to Lemnos and Sicily, on the reasoning that islands register water scarcity, biodiversity loss and shrinking living space earlier than most places.
The 13th Bozcaada International Ecological Documentary Festival takes place on Bozcaada from 7 to 11 October 2026. Further information is available at bifed.org.
