The 23rd annual Planet in Focus International Environmental Film Festival (PIF) recognizes Zoe Lucas, Christiana Figueres, and Manvi Bhalla as the 2022 Eco Hero winners in the Canadian, International and Rob Stewart Youth category, respectively, sponsored by Esri Canada.

The festival continues to October 23, 2022 with a Closing Night Live Screening of Lars Ostenfeld’s Into the Ice, at Paradise Theatre at 6:30pm ET.

TORONTO (October 19, 2022) – Planet in Focus International Environmental Film Festival (PIF), Canada’s largest and longest running environmental film festival, announces its 2022 Eco-Heroes amid its 23rd edition, ending October 23 with a live feature screening of Into the Ice by Denmark filmmaker, Lars Ostenfeld.

Each year, PIF presents Eco-Hero Awards to acknowledge the impactful work of Canadian and International environmentalists who are raising awareness on critical climate issues through artistic expression. The 2022 Eco-Heroes are sponsored by Esri Canada.

2022 Planet in Focus Canadian Eco-Hero: Zoe Lucas

Zoe received an MFA in 1977 from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and then taught part-time in the goldsmithing department. In 1974, while at NSCAD, she began working on Sable Island as a volunteer cook and field assistant with a Dalhousie University seal research team, and after a few seasons continued on the island as manager/technician for the terrain restoration program.

By 1982, Zoe was involved full-time with Sable projects, conducting various research and monitoring programs including studies of persistent litter in the marine environment, and shark predation on seals. Long-term projects include research on the island’s horses, beach surveys for oiled seabirds and stranded cetaceans,and biodiversity studies (mosses, lichens, fungi, and invertebrates). Results of research programs have been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, as well as in newsletters and magazines.

In 2002, Zoe established the Green Horse Society, while in 2004 became a Research Associate with the Nova Scotia Museum, and in 2008 received an Honorary Doctorate from Dalhousie University. For ten years, Zoe partnered with the Ecology Action Centre in Halifax to organize a series of annual public meetings about Sable Island.

2022 Planet in Focus International Eco-Hero: Christiana Figueres

Christiana Figueres is a Costa Rican citizen and an internationally recognized leader on climate change. She was Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) from 2010 to 2016. During her tenure at the UNFCCC, Ms. Figueres brought together national and sub-national governments, corporations and activists, financial institutions and NGOs to jointly deliver the historic Paris Agreement on Climate Change, in which 195 sovereign nations agreed on a collaborative path forward to limit future global warming to well below 2°C, and strive for 1.5°C, in order to protect the most vulnerable. For this achievement, Ms. Figueres has been credited with forging a new brand of collaborative diplomacy and received multiple awards.

Since then Ms. Figueres has continued to accelerate the global response to climate change. Today she is the co-founder of Global Optimism, co-host of the podcast Outrage + Optimism and is the co-author of The Future We Choose: The Stubborn Optimists’ Guide to the Climate Crisis. Ms. Figueres sits on multiple executive and advisory boards and is a frequent public speaker and media commentator. She is a graduate of Swarthmore College and the London School of Economics. She lives in Costa Rica and has two fantastic daughters.

2022 Planet in Focus Rob Stewart Youth Eco-Hero: Manvi Bhalla

With her strong interdisciplinary background, Manvi decided to contribute to the climate justice movement through founding the national non-profit, Shake Up The Establishment. Among other leadership roles in the sector, she is on advisory committees for the Canadian Coalition for Environment and Climate Justice, The Harbour and Youth Climate Corps. Manvi works to ensure intersectional and decolonized approaches are always centred within the health research space. She is also the co-founder/ director of the non-profit, missINFORMED, which is dedicated to the health and wellbeing of women and gender-diverse peoples. She is a published health researcher who has worked at the Hospital for Sick Children and the Universities of Guelph, Waterloo and Dalhousie. 

In mid-2021, she received her MSc in Public Health and Health Systems from University of Waterloo, where her research aimed to improve climate change risk communication and investigate structural barriers towards climate action within the public health sector. As of Fall 2021, Manvi is completing her PhD at the University of British Columbia in Resources, Environment and Sustainability in the Law, Governance, Justice & Policy stream. There, she’s also grateful to be able to mentor brilliant undergraduate researchers as part of UBC Climate Hub’s Climate Justice Research Collaborative.

Closing out this year’s festival will be a live screening of Denmark filmmaker, Lars Ostenfeld’s Into the Ice, preceded by a live Eco-Hero Presentation with Christiana Figueres at the Paradise Theatre. The film is a journey of discovery to the vast masses of ice and the secret of our future that the ice harbours. Ostenfeld accompanies three of the world’s leading glaciologists on pioneering scientific expeditions to and into the Greenland ice sheet who a