While the Trump Administration finalizes its plans to reassess the human contribution to climate change, over 160 films about the environment will be screening in Washington as part of the annual D.C. Environmental Film Festival.

The festival has been bringing green films to the District since 1993. When it started, it was the only environmentally focused festival of its kind in the country.

The 11-day festival kicks off on Thursday with a screening at National Geographic of “The River and the Wall.” The movie follows five friends who trek through the wilderness along the Texas-Mexico border and consider how construction of a border wall could affect the natural landscape.

This political bent is nothing new for the festival’s organizers.

“We try to find films that galvanize people,” said Christopher Head, the festival’s executive director. “We’ve really doubled down on our efforts to try to make it clear how urgent all these environmental issues are.”

He reiterates: “We’re basically running out of time.”

The festival will also screen a number of movies for those who might not be drawn to panic-inducing documentaries about the human-led ruination of the natural world.

One of these is “Free Solo,” the Oscar-winning documentary that follows Alex Honnold’s record-setting, vertigo-inducing climb up El Capitan in Yosemite. He completes the climb without any ropes or equipment. “It’s a thriller, and it’s a feel-good film,” said Brad Forter, the festival’s programming director. It screens at National Geographic (which produced the film) on March 18 at 7:00 p.m.

A French film will take home a new festival award for Best International Documentary. “A Modern Shepherdess” tells the story of a woman named Stéphanie who leaves her Parisian life to manage a farm in the countryside. It will screen twice, once on March 15 at the Embassy of France and again on March 24 at National Geographic.

The festival also provides an opportunity to visit some of the 25 area theaters, museums, embassies, and libraries that will host screenings. You can even go see movies at the zoo.

On March 16, the National Zoo will screen a series of four shorts about Smithsonian researchers called “Field in Focus.” Each film was produced by Roshan Patel, the Zoo’s media producer and a conservation biologist. And when they say short, they mean short: The films range from 2 to 5 minutes long.

Another shorts program, “Local Waterways,” will bring four documentaries about Washington-area ecosystems to the Carnegie Institution for Science on March 23: “The Incredible Oyster Reef” about Chesapeake Bay oysters, “Shad Run” about migratory fish in the Potomac River, “On The Waterfront With Arthur Cotton Moore” about Georgetown’s urban waterfront, and “Healing Baltimore’s Harbor,” about cleaning up the city’s Inner Harbor.

“We hope people don’t come out of these films feeling depressed or hopeless in any way,” Head said. “We make a very strong effort to try to say that there are solutions, there is a path forward.”

But again, he clarifies, “it’s very, very urgent at this point.”

The D.C. Environmental Film Festival runs from March 14 – 24. View the full schedule here.

This story was originally published on WAMU.