Iranian Green Film biennial Festival was founded in 1999. The first edition of the festival was held in February 1999 and the next editions were held in 2001, 2003 and 2005.

Held in February 1999 with the theme “We only have one earth! Let’s keep it”, the festival selected 490 films from the substantial number of submissions. Among presented films, 104 films were from 26 countries. United Nations with 22 titles had the majority number of films in international competition section, followed by England and China with 10 and 9 titles. Among the submissions, 147 artworks had Educational and Public-Collaboration Encouragement themes, and 40 titles were about Biodiversity. In terms of audience’s category, 262 artworks were screened for adult audiences, 134 titles for professionals and 77 titles for children and youngster audiences. In terms of winners of 1st edition of the festival, “the Desert” by Mr Nima Bank won the best film, “I am your warrior” from Sweden and “Tears and Voices of Nature” from England were awarded the second and third best film prizes. Also, peripheral sections of the festival included several workshops and free-of-charge screening venues with the aim of raising public awareness on environmental concerns.

With the theme “Environment at the heart of Dialogue among Civilizations”, the 2nd edition of the festival was held in February 2001. In this edition, 460 films from 18 provinces attracted nearly 56500 audiences from all over the country. In the international section, 37 films from 13 countries entered the competition among which Germany with 8 titles and United States and India each with 7 titles had the most number of entries. Among the artworks, 101 films had Educational and Public-Collaboration Encouragement themes, and 24 titles were about Pollutions (air, noise, water and soil resources), 200 films were presented for adult audiences, 42 titles for experts, and 119 works for children and youngster audiences. In this edition of the festival, the “Tiny and Magnificent Creatures” from France won the best motion picture award, “Water and Sentiment” and “Secret of Flower” from Iran won the second and third best film awards. Furthermore, the festival included 29 screening venues, workshops for raising public awareness, awareness among artists, environmental experts and students and calling for support of national and international non-governmental organizations active in protecting the environment. Attracting audiences from poor provinces was one of the greatest achievements of this festival. For example, 14000 individuals from Char Mahal Bakhtiari province attended the festival’s venues.

Held in February 2003, the theme of the 3rd edition of the Festival was “Human, the essence of Sustainable Development”. Total number of submissions for this round was 475 titles. 110 films were submitted from 28 countries which indicates a marked elevation of international popularity of the festival at the time. Netherlands and India with 11 titles, Russia and Germany each with 9 titles had the greatest number of international contributions to the festival. The selected films had various themes and genres including 209 documentary films, 22 narratives, 40 animations, 27 music videos, 22 narrative documentaries, 17 titles of poetic view, 13 titles with cinematic themes, and 76 titles with other themes. Among the artworks, 166 films had Educational and Public-Collaboration Encouragement themes, and 37 titles were about Pollutions (air, noise, water and soil resources).In terms of audience’s category, 175 films were presented for adult audiences, 101 titles for experts, and 150 works for children and youngster audiences. In this festival, the best motion picture prize was awarded to “Tides of Aldabra” from Italy, “Jan e Marjan” from Iran and “Battle in Ganga River” from United Kingdom won the second and third best film awards. The Ample Achievements of this Edition of Festival Were as Follows: -Holding 106 screening venues across the country -Collaboration with community centers for screening venues and educational purposes -Design and publishing the official festival website for the 1st time -Registering the festival in the Green Film Network (GFN) -200-percent increase of artists’ participation in the festival -Devoting a special section to films related to cultural pollution -Presenting packages of previous festivals’ entries and films as means of education and raising public awareness on environmental matters.

With the theme “Education for Sustainable Development”, the 4th edition of the festival was held in June 2005. In this edition, from the 612 presented films, 434 titles were documentaries, 99 animations, 60 narratives, 8 titles were cinematic, and 11 titles were from other categories. In the international section, 30 countries with 107 productions entered the competition among which Turkey with 14 titles, France with 12 titles and Netherlands with 11 titles had the greatest number of contributions. Among the productions, 175 films had Educational and Public-Collaboration Encouragement themes, and 95 titles were about Biodiversity. Also in this round of the festival, 257 films were produced for adult audiences, 100 titles for experts, and 194 works for children and youngster audiences. Furthermore, during the festival 200 screening venues were held across the country. In total, throughout the four editions of the festival, 1934 films were screened, among which 1585 films were from Iran and 349 films were submitted from other countries.

1-Promotion of culture and increasing public awareness on environmental conservation 2-To promote closer bonds between artists and society on environmental protection subjects 3-To encourage higher quality of creative artistic and cinematic artworks on environmental concerns

1-To encourage public commitment to protect nature and environment through cinema and visual arts 2-To draw the attention of national and international authorities to the necessity of protecting the environment 3-To encourage and reward public, celebrities’ and authorities’ participation in protecting the environment

The festival generally divides into two National and International sections. International competition includes competitive and non-competitive sections: Competitive International Competition of Motion Pictures, Documentary Movies and Animations: – Long Motion Pictures (More than 50 minutes) – Short Motion Pictures (Less than 30 minutes) – Long Documentary movies (More than 30 minutes) – Short Documentary movies (Less than 30 minutes) – Animations Non Competitive Non-competitive section includes Workshops, conferences, Seminars and speeches related to festival: 1-“Investigating impacts of visual arts on cultural and educational structures of environmental protection matters and the role of NGOs” workshop 2- “Renewal and Recycled energies” workshops 3- Educational workshops on “Protecting the environment at home, work, school, public locations and nature” 4- “Artworks’ Review and Criticism” workshops 5- Panel discussions with leading national and international filmmakers 6- Artwork review of one selected national and one selected international filmmaker and rewarding their achievements 7- Reward an individual or NGO with remarkable activities in environmental protection 8-Reward three selected green manufacturing or service companies and screen short introductions of their green activities in the festival 9- Reward three active artists in environmental protection acts