The Fungi Film Festival (FFF) doesn’t make sense. First of all, it’s not really a festival. With an overall length of two hours and fifteen minutes, watching everything on offer this year won’t take you much longer than an average movie at the cinema. The short films are an aggregate of disparate styles and genres, so much so that a viewer unaware of the name of the festival would struggle to understand what unites them. That’s compounded by the fact that the topic of the festival, fungi, is at the same time outrageously broad and ridiculously narrow. 

I have studied fungi for many years, both in the lab and through art and literature. Now that I am not researching them anymore, I am intrigued by why so many people either ignore fungi or have a negative view of these fascinating organisms. Negativity tends to attract more attention than positivity, and a few toxic mushrooms or food-spoiling molds overshadow the huge benefits that fungi have. Fungi (that is, mushrooms, yeasts, molds, lichens, mycelium, and others) sustain the life of plants, recycle dead biological matter and ferment much of the food we eat. I believe we would live in a better world if everyone realized how important fungi are and worked to protect and safeguard their precious function in the ecosystem. So of course I was elated to discover that there is a festival dedicated to putting these fascinating organisms on the big screen — small though it may be.

The way people see fungi in film can deeply influence how they ultimately view these organisms in real life. This year’s FFF, now in its fourth year, screened twenty fungi-filled shorts ranging from two to fourteen minutes, including experimental, narrative, documentary, stop-motion and animated films and one music video. During the premiere in Portland, Oregon, on November 30th, the festival announced award winners in five categories.

Taking top prize was “Best of the Fest” awardee, Lichen by Anita Pico (Spain), a thriller set in the Cíes Island on the Spanish Atlantic coast. The film depicts a botanist on holiday with their partner. The botanist is obsessed with the discovery of a new plant while painfully experiencing that a healthy partnership requires mutual support. There is an undertone of discomfort throughout the whole movie. It feels like the filmmaker is telling us about the pain of a breakup, but we cannot fully understand why it hurts so much. It’s a powerful (although not particularly subtle) metaphor for how frequently people ignore the importance of fungi.

A series of documentaries get straight to the point and present what people do with fungi and how fungi change them. The “Most Edutaining” awardee, Medzzz Too Strong by Cody Lucich (USA) focus, like Cultivation in the USA by Erik Lomen (USA), on communities of praxis around Psilocybe (psychoactive) mushrooms and the cultivation of edible and commercial species. These documentaries provide inspiration for anyone unfamiliar with why fungi are becoming more and more culturally relevant. 

Other documentaries use more artistic and experimental approaches. Transformation by Aleksi Puustinen, Aleksi Vesaluoma, Dennis Konoi and Miikka Kaila (Finland) shows how fungi are central players in the circularity of matter. “Something remarkable is happening underground,” appears on the screen. “Something we are just beginning to understand.” The documentary opens with shots of a forest, which, like any forest, would not exist without fungi. Without words, people create lamps by transforming wood with the fungus Ganoderma lucidum. In the final shot, the lamps glow in the forest, oddly evoking gigantic mushrooms. Woods return to the woods.

In the documentary MycoTemple by Alexandre Zimmermann (France), fungi are a place for retreat. Artist Côme Di Meglio creates a biodegradable dome with mycelium as a place of spiritual discovery and connection with nature. The movie focuses on the process of building the dome and the community aspect of sitting together under its roof. It’s an apt choice for Di Meglio to use reishi (Ganoderma lucidum, also known as lingzhi), sometimes referred to as the “mushroom of immortality.” Fungi, as both decomposers and creators of new organic matter, are involved more than any other organism in the cycle of life and death. 

The “Audience Choice” awardee, The Inner Rat by Katrina Mortko (USA), offers comic relief. Two puppet rats, Bert and Ernie, decide to find their inner selves with magic mushrooms. The director doesn’t leave room for interpretation on the question if the rats find their true identities, and with a sudden bout of absurdity shows the puppets have become her real rats and are having the time of their life.

Many directors opted for an experimental approach to conveying their passion for fungi. Aria in Vanitas by Maria Sierra, Valentina Catanho, Mélanie Fernandez and Francisco Máximo (Spain) opens with a still landscape teeming with life. Fruits, vegetables, mushrooms, milk, bread and cheese are rotting. The audience sees fungi in action. With time-lapse techniques, the audience sees still life melting at different speeds. It’s curious, for a film shown at FFF, that the first thing to disappear is a mushroom.

The “Freshest” awardee, Of Dreaming by Brad Necyk and Gary James Joynes (Canada), opens with beautiful drone shots of the ancient forest Avatar Grove in Vancouver Island. Nature is replaced by artifice with hyper-fast lapses of AI-generated images of mushrooms and lichens (but also of mosses, ferns and trees), intermixed with slow motion footage of an old man in lethargic poses against a background of a monotonous vibrating sound. The directors keep the audience awake with flash frames of naked bodies and body parts. (Brad, Gary: we saw them.)

In the “Avant-Myco” awardee, Ergot by Mariela Schöffmann (Austria), a face swallows a pill as ominous music plays in the background. Forms, shapes and sinuous curves merge on the screen with explosions of fire and melting colors. I see silhouettes which I dare not express as I fear they will tell more about myself than about the movie. A recurring shape reminds me of rye grains infected with the ergot fungus, calling to mind its Latin name: Claviceps, a club head. Or is it? Suddenly it strikes me why FFF is so odd and powerful. It not only shows fungi in all their magnificent weirdness: it also encourages the viewer to find the majesty of fungi themselves. Just as that thought occurs to me, the images I see morph and merge and condense into a small ball. A face swallows it, and everything starts again.

The FFF is more of a fest than a festival. It’s a celebration of fungi. It is, sadly, still a celebration with too few attendees. The organisers call it a “niche festival,” which is ironic for a film festival on fungi, one of the most diverse domains of life. Despite this breadth, the festival is too short because most people — and filmmakers — still ignore these organisms. Genres, cinematic techniques and fungal forms at the FFF are as diverse as fungi themselves, a poignant rebuff of Hollywood’s dismissal.

Beware: this isn’t for everyone. Unless, that is, you like cinema that challenges you to open your mind.

The 2023 FFF is streaming on demand until January 3, 2024.

This article has been updated to reflect the correct fungus used in Transformation, Ganoderma lucidum.