“Issues don’t move people, good stories do,” reads the University of Wisconsin’s environmental film festival’s mantra.

“At the end of the day, a good story will get people to care about the characters, and that’s what you’ll carry with you in the real world,” Peter Boger, the film festival’s programming director, said.

The “Tales From Planet Earth” environmental film festival, which took place Nov. 6-8, was a showcase for National Geographic-style documentaries. This year’s festival boasted an array of 40 films set on six different continents in more than 25 countries — all focusing on this year’s theme of “belief” and how one’s personal convictions affect responses to global warming and climate change.

Boger kept the mantra in mind when he began looking for film candidates from different festivals around the world last September. Boger is one of a small group of people responsible for determining the films to be shown in the festival, a task that required him to watch between 250 to 300 films over the course of seven months, before he narrowed it down to the 40 in this year’s lineup.  

Boger has been involved in the film festival since it first began in 2007, and has helped coordinate with themes like “hope” and “justice.” But this year, Boger thought “belief” was an especially important topic to bring in because of how it affects people’s evolving behaviors and opinions on climate change.

“When you ask people what’s really going to get them to change, it’s rarely the scientific facts that get them to change their behaviors or what they’re doing,” he said. “It’s always something that strikes deeply and personally.” 

Boger said the film festival lineup offers an expansive definition of “belief” relating not only to the climate, but also the community. The films vary both in explanation of “belief” and in the film genres themselves, which currently range from documentaries to an opera to a hip-hop film, he said.

This year, films were also set in a wide range of countries, and featured directors of varying nationalities. Marc Silberman, UW German professor, introduced two films by Turkish-German director Fatih Akin.

According to Silberman, one of Akin’s films, “The Edge of Heaven,” is about three families whose fates intersect in a tragic way while moving between Turkey and Germany.

Silberman said this film is an example of how the festival expands on the definition of “belief” and the environment, as it is more about how the characters’ beliefs lead them to make certain choices in the film.

“While the overall theme of ‘belief’ is engaged by many of the films, the festival’s overriding goal is environmental awareness, which includes social problems of many different kinds,” Silberman said.

Here are three highlights from the festival worth seeing:

Arctic Mosque (2013)

Directors: Nilufer Rahman, Saira Rahman

Set in the Canadian town of Inuvik, near the Arctic Ocean, this film examines a small immigrant Muslim population in need of a place to worship.  The film depicts their prefabricated mosque making the 2500-mile hike across the Canadian wilderness to become the northernmost mosque in North America.  More than a story about a journey, “Arctic Mosque” explores how a community is sought after and formed — even in nature’s harshest conditions.  

TOXIC: Amazon (2011)

Directors: Felipe Milanez

In May 2011 in Brazil, gunmen shot and killed Zé Cláudio Ribeiro and Maria do Espirito Santo, two married environmental activists. Not coincidentally, their murders took place on the same day the Brazilian government voted to decrease national forestry protection.

This film, directed by the late couple’s personal friend, is a first-person account and investigation into their lives leading up to their murders, and the violent struggles currently taking place between foresters, government agents and environmentalists.

The Edge of Heaven (2007)

Director: Fatih Akin

In one of two films scheduled for this festival’s lineup, German director Fatih Akin tells the tale of intersecting lives and the tragedies that ensue. The story centers around a Turkish widower in Germany who takes in a prostitute trying to support her daughter living in Turkey. The main characters’ fates intersect amid tragedy, loss and the looming threat of deportation.