Every year - right after the Venice Film Festival - the Green Drop Award acknowledges the movie, which better displays the values of ecology, sustainable development and cooperation between people. The trophy contains the soil from different places on Earth, to raise awareness on relevant environmental issues.
The 2020 edition of the Green Drop Award is won by Forada (province of Belluno) and shows environmental impacts of global warming which occurred between the Paleocene and Eocene eras in that area. The drop-shaped glass award contains the soil of Forada (BL), in order to testify the climate catastrophe which happened 56 million years ago, as a warning to not make it happen again.
From 2012, in the Green Drop Award competition, Green Cross Italia honours the movie, which better displays the values of ecology, sustainable development and cooperation between people – among the ones competing in the Venice International Film Festival. The Green Drop Award 2020 – which is a drop-shaped Murano glass by the Master Simone Cenedese –goes to Forada in the municipality of Borgo Valbelluna (in the province of Belluno). A land which reveals the environmental impacts of the most dramatic, the most extreme, and quickest – as defined by scientists – global warming occurred about 56 million years ago when our Planet was different from as we know it nowadays. This exceptional hyperthermal event is known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (known as PETM).
In a few thousand years, average temperatures on the globe increased by at least 5 degrees Celsius, resulting in a massive release of CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the oceans and in the atmosphere. An event which triggered remarkable repercussions on climate, environment, wildlife and plants.
"In thousands of years, the Planet geologically changed in an extremely short time frame. This helps us to understand how severe climate change can become even nowadays. Such changes can be triggered by an amount of carbon dioxide, which is released into the atmosphere ten times faster than 56 million years ago," explains Professor Rodolfo Coccioni, palaeontologist and geologist.
"It is significant for us to continue talking about climate change,” says Elio Pacilio, president of Green Cross Italia. “We chose to do this through a soil which recounts the story of the Earth’s upheaval. This year's award is a warning of what is currently going on: the impacts of the current climate crisis are getting more and more regular and visible. This represents a symbol to build a sustainable future to prevent disasters from happening again”.
The 2020 edition is provided by the patronage of the Ministry of Environment and Protection of the Territory and the Sea, ENEA and the Sardinia Film Commission.
The past editions winners
The first winner of the Awards was Brazil in 2012, with the soil collected at “Rio+20” – the UN Conference on Sustainable Development. In 2013, the sand of Egypt, in 2013, as a sign of solidarity; the following year it was the turn of the sand from Antarctica, to raise awareness about the threats of global warming.
In the 2015 edition, the "green glass drop" award was won by Senegal, a country where Green Cross cooperation projects take place (where desertification takes place and people have to face poverty and hunger). In 2016, the year of the encyclical “Laudato si”, Assisi was awarded – since it is the birthplace of St. Francis. For the 2018 Green Drop Award, the loam of the Icelandic volcano Laki was awarded, whose eruption of 1784 caused deaths, harsh winters, torrid summers, floods and famines.
The soil contained in the Green Drop Award 2019 came from the land known as “the cradle of humanity”: the Olduvai gorge, the area of Tanzania where the first hominins learned to live and cooperate and then migrated to reach every part of the planet. This was also one of the most important places in the history of cinema. Here, the filmmaker Stanley Kubrick and writer Arthur C. Clarke set the first chapter of “2001: A Space Odyssey”.
