Part of REEF’s Biodiversity & Cinema’s Program, The Land and Its Keepers is a residency, training, and creation project based on a collaboration between Filmmakers, and Environmental advocates or land practitioners.

The program gathered 22 participants from diverse backgrounds for a one-week residency focused on exchange and learning with a multidisciplinary panel. After the residency, participants collaborated on 10 film concepts that were developed into short documentaries. The project builds on REEF’s Biodiversity and Cinema’s first edition in 2023 and aims to strengthen environmentally engaged creative storytelling on land an resources issues.

The ten films explore different dimensions of Lebanon’s environmental and human realities that range from a shepherd’s mountain route and a threatened monk seal to a city cemetery, the salt pans of Anfeh, the beekeepers, farmers and families struck by an ecocidal war . Together they highlight the land and all its people, animals, and plants holding on to each other.