The Shift Your World Film Festival

Are you ready to join the enriching 4-day journey exploring the power of film? This important event is rooted in the understanding that the most powerful world-changing movies are ones that leave us as better, wiser, and more engaged humans by the end of the experience.

The event is completely free and you're invited to engage in unique online experiences inspired from in-person film festivals-including panel discussions with filmmakers and voting for our first-ever awards ceremony.

Here are some of the incredible films you'll be watching:

KISS THE GROUND—Directed by Josh and Rebecca Tickell-Kiss the Ground is a groundbreaking film that demonstrates how regenerating the world's soils can completely and rapidly stabilize Earth's climate, restore lost ecosystems and create abundant food supplies.

THE REUNITED STATES—Directed by Ben Rekhi—The Reunited States is a powerful documentary that follows the unsung heroes on the difficult journey of bridging our political and racial divides. Susan Bro, who lost her daughter when a car drove through a crowd in Charlottesville, and David and Erin Leaverton, a Republican couple who travel to all fifty states to find out what divides us, are just a few of the characters profiled in the film.

THE TWELVE—Directed by Lucy Martens and Olivier Girard—The Twelve is a documentary that gives a voice to the wisdom of twelve elders from around the globe, who share important and long-forgotten knowledge of humanity's eternal（永恒的）and complex connection with Nature and each other, and what it really means to be human.

To me, Shakespeare is a bit of a touchy subject in the theatre industry. I believe Shakespeare’s plays to be the most challenging in terms of language. When you have challenging language, then understanding the plot and topics will become a challenge as well. It’s like a chain. If you don’t understand it from the start, it makes things hard later on and people tend to give up on it. Regardless of all of this, I believe Shakespeare is important in the sense that it’s where true theatre started. William Shakespeare is a name everyone knows regardless of whether you enjoy his works or not.

Many high schools or colleges put on at least one Shakespeare play every few years and I like that. I think it’s important to expose students to plays that are a bit more challenging than they used to be. Of course. it’s not easy to understand these plays but then think about the people who act in those plays. When acting, you have to understand your character and not only that, you need to completely know everything going on around you as well. So to understand the script (剧本) is one thing. but to act in a Shakespeare play is a whole another thing. How about memorizing the lines? That’s one of the hardest things actors have to get through. It is such heightened language that it’s almost like learning a foreign language. Shakespeare is tough and that’s what I think I love it the most. The challenge is understanding. Once you have that then you have room to play with it.

Therefore, if people walked into a Shakespeare play with more of an open mind, their experience would be so much better. There is a large amount of exploration and discovery in his plays and the experience can be really satisfying. It’s hard stuff, but it’s fascinating and we should be embracing it.

The best travel movies of all time

Movie theaters around the world have closed during the coronavirus outbreak. Fortunately, there’s never been a better time to catch up on classic oldies and favorites. Below, read our picks for best travel movies:

Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

It’s one of the most satisfying films of director Wes Anderson’s works. Set in an imaginary country East European Republic of Zubrowka in the 1930s, the plot is anchored by a murder investigation peppered with stolen art, prison escapes and a secret concierge society.

Though the hotel doesn’t actually exist, much of the film was shot in the beautiful German town of Goerlitz, famous for its medieval streets.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001)

When Harry Potter runs through a column at King’s Cross railway station in London to get to Platform 9¾, we know it isn’t real. And yet we want to visit.

The movie’s locations are inspired by real places, as graduates of English private schools will tell you: black robe for formal hall dinners, rushing to narrow old streets to visit tea houses and sandwich shops, discovering books that are hundreds of years old.

Roman Holiday (1953)

Equal parts bittersweet and fascinating, 1953 fairy tale “Roman Holiday” features a doe-eyed princess (Audrey Hepburn) and a dashing newspaperman (Gregory Peck) in a romantic film that has them wandering the Spanish Steps and breaking into the streets of Rome on a Vespa.

In a time when those streets are quiet, the film might serve as a reminder that they will eventually spring to life again.