Germany aims to make its film industry greener

The film industry has a massive environmental footprint. Film crews fly to locations worldwide; diesel generators run all day to provide light and power to the entire set. The dozens of trucks and trailers required for major productions also use fuel. And it is not uncommon for up to 5,000 plastic cups to end up in the trash during a film production.

Germany aims to reduce the industry's impact on the environment.

The "Green Shooting" working group has reached an agreement with the federal states' film funding agencies and the German Federal Film Board in Berlin to set uniform minimum ecological standards for film, TV and video-on-demand (VoD) productions.

"The climate crisis is one of the survival issues of our time," said Minister of State for Culture and the Media Claudia Roth, who is also from the Green Party, at a panel discussing the program on the sidelines of the Berlinale. "We can only counter it together."

Climate change, including natural disasters affecting Germany directly, as well as the Fridays for Future movement have anchored climate protection in the minds of many people working in film and television.

Since 2012, the Schleswig-Holstein Film Fund has been awarding the "Green Shooting Pass" to films and series produced in an environmentally-friendly manner, such as a Hamburg TV film from the Tatort crime series, "Die goldene Zeit" (2019), in which there was no driving at all, or the series "Babylon Berlin."

First ecological minimum standards

Since the beginning of this year, the minimum ecological standards of the "Green Shooting Working Group" have been implemented in Germany by public and private broadcasters as well as by streaming services such as Netflix. The companies hire sustainability consultants, also known as "green consultants."

Even before the first take of a production, the consultant calculates the foreseeable CO2 consumption of the film, in other words, the production's ecological footprint.

The switch to green electricity should ultimately reduce CO2 emissions; other strategies include doing without diesel generators, short-haul flights and disposable tableware. The use of rechargeable batteries and environmentally-friendly vehicles or the use of public transportation are also part of the plan.

As of next year, the ecological minimum standards of the working group should also apply uniformly throughout Germany, becoming requirements for film funding from the federal and state governments.

"It's a huge success," said Minister of State for Culture Roth.

All productions funded by the federal and state governments would thereby receive the "Green Motion" label of the working group, which was introduced at the beginning of 2022.

"For too long, we thought the big pictures created by film and TV productions only caused limited CO2 emissions and resource consumption," pointed out Carl Bergengruen, spokesperson for the Green Shooting working group. Research has demonstrated the opposite.

The driving force behind this new approach in the film industry was and is the filmmakers' initiative Changemakers.film, which developed the minimum ecological standards with the help of environmental experts.

Since then, more than 600 members of the film industry have joined the group. Actor Pheline Roggan is one of the initiators. "We have to change course quickly if we still want to achieve the climate targets," Roggan told DW. "It's so easy to change things."

Harmful production tourism

One of the things that keeps German filmmakers from producing sustainably is the regional competition to attract film shoots in the country.

Many productions commute from the north to the south or from the east to the west of Germany to gain access to film subsidies that are only granted if the film is shot in the federal state where the film funding agency is based.

Each German state has its own funding system, with its specific eligibility criteria. Screenplays are often adapted just to obtain financing.

It is also more expensive to shoot films sustainably: It costs between 1%-4% to produce under the "green" standards. "Green Shooting is more expensive, someone has to pay for it first!" pointed out Patricia Schlesinger, director of public broadcaster RBB at the panel discussion with the Minister of State for Culture. "Minimum standards alone are not enough to deal with the climate crisis," she added.

On the other hand, director Philip Gassmann, an expert in environmentally-friendly production techniques, sees enormous savings potential through sustainable film production.

His company Greenfilmtools has trained more than 300 green consultants to date, who can now advise on strategies to apply during the development of the screenplay, or on the most environmentally-friendly equipment and vehicles for shoots. "Planning is key," said Gassmann.

One such green consultant is Tobias Wolf. At the production company Bavaria Fiction, he assesses CO2 consumption on production sets. "Being open to green film production is not a question of generations," he told DW. "We all have to pull together to counteract climate change."

This article was originally written in German.