OTHER-GROUNDS FILM FESTIVAL: Day 3 – Passing down Knowledge

Other-Grounds Film Festival is a multicultural, collaborative initiative exploring what it means to be human on Earth—and how we can build responsible, connected relationships with nature and each other. In the face of today’s overlapping crises—environmental, social, and ideological—we seek new ways to perceive, imagine, and relate to the world.

Bringing together films, conversations, and diverse perspectives, the festival highlights knowledge systems that have often been silenced. It amplifies voices fighting for sustainability, the rights of nature, and a more-than-human future.

Welcome to day 3 program: Passing down knowledge

On the final day of the Other-Grounds Film Festival, we gather around the theme of Passing Down Knowledge—a day devoted to intergenerational wisdom, emotional awareness, and the stories we share for a more connected future. Join us for two deeply engaging and participatory events that center care, creativity, and collective reflection.

• Doors Open 11:30

• Roundtable on climate anxiety with Ungir Umhverfissinnar (12:00-13:00)

• Break (13:00-13:30)
• A Tree Is Like A Man (2019) (23 min), Time and Seashell (13 min), Baigal Nuur-Lake Baikal (10 min)  (13:30-14:30).
• Break (14:30-15:30);
• Interactive crafts workshop for kids by Christoph Matt (eco-social designer) on imagining the world,
  where biodiversity has disappeared (15:30-16:30)

• Break (16:30-17:00)
• I Am The River, The River Is Me (86 min) (17:00-18:30);

• Closing word: 18:30-18:45.

Let it out: A Sharing Circle for Emotional Release – Roundtable Session

12:00–13:00
Facilitated by Laura Sólveig Lefort Scheefer and Bára Örk Melsted of the Icelandic Young Environmentalists, Let It Out offers a compassionate space for activists and changemakers to pause and reconnect with their inner emotional landscape.

This guided sharing circle invites participants to step back from the urgency of activism and gently sit with the feelings that often go unspoken—grief, frustration, hope, exhaustion. Through grounding practices, reflection, and the option to share in community, we’ll hold space for vulnerability, healing, and mutual care. This is not a space for fixing, but for feeling, witnessing, and being witnessed.

Because tending to our emotional well-being is an essential part of sustaining meaningful change.

GLACIER GHOSTS / GLETSCHERGEISTER – Storytelling & Drawing Workshop

15:30–16:30
Led by Christoph Matt of the Sympoietic Society art collective, this participatory workshop welcomes children and adults alike into a world where glaciers whisper stories through ice and imagination.

Together, we’ll explore Icelandic folklore and environmental storytelling by imagining the lives of glacier ghosts—spirits dwelling in alpine and aquatic ecosystems. Participants will create drawings and paper sculptures inspired by these tales, forming a shared vision of ecological memory and future care.

The resulting artworks will journey onward to be exhibited at the SAARI art residency in Finland in summer 2025, continuing the conversation across borders and generations.

Accessibility:
Elissa Auditorium is wheelchair accessible, with a low-threshold entrance, an accessible toilet and changing facilities on the same floor, a ramp from the parking lot, and an automatic main entrance. For questions regarding accessibility, please contact: kolbrun@nordichouse.is