Powerful animated Squirrel film wins International award

A powerful film featuring an animated Cumbrian red squirrel explaining how trees can help with flooding and climate change has won an international award.

‘Wood You Believe It‘ claimed the ‘IPST Education Award’ as part of the Goethe Institut’s ‘Science Film Festival’ 2025.

This year, more than 1,500 films from 110 countries were submitted to the festival, and 123 films were selected for competition.  The festival has a global audience of over 500,000, with these films being used in primary and secondary schools.

The short film is one of a series of four engaging and informative Creature Comforts-style animations created to show how natural flood management can help protect homes, businesses and farms and assist in the fight against climate change.

They are the result of an Environment Agency-funded collaboration with the ‘Cumbria Wildlife Trust’ and ‘Cumbria Innovation Flood Resilience’ (CiFR).

National flood management is a catch-all term for a variety of landscaping techniques used to hold water back during flood events, which reduce the impact downstream on communities and infrastructure such as bridges. The films demonstrate how these techniques can also reduce the impact of climate change and improve water quality.

‘Wood You Believe It’ features Twiggy, a Cumbrian red squirrel, as our guide. She explains the incredible range of benefits that trees provide in reducing the impacts of flooding, drought and heat, as well as their other amazing advantages for wildlife and in trapping and storing carbon.

The film is voiced by local RSPB expert Annabel Rushton who works at Haweswater Nature Reserve. Indeed, all the voiceovers for the films were done by local people working in various sectors including flood reduction, conservation, farming and water quality, and all showcase natural flood management methods being done right here in Cumbria.

The Environment Agency’s David Kennedy (also the voice of Gregory the Woodpecker) explains the first series of films creation process began during Covid:

“I had an idea of how to reach the public to explain natural flood management during lockdown which was to create a series of simple and engaging animated films to tell our story.

“I wrote the films over a few months, by which time I was working on the CiFR project. My aim was to try and make the films as impactful as possible in the three to four minutes we had.

“The overall impact of these films has been really heartening for me and all my colleagues who contributed their knowledge and experience; we’re all really proud of what we’ve achieved, and it’s terrific to recognised by such a brilliant festival.”

Cadi Catlow, Director of Wood You Believe It, said:

“Making this film was an absolute joy for me because it combined two of my personal passions – wildlife and research! Twiggy the Red Squirrel was built as a life-sized, anatomically-correct puppet with a huge amount of attention to detail … though her face was gently worked into a slightly cartoonish direction around the eyes and mouth to help with the animation. Her cheerful, expressive voice actually belongs to a real expert working in the field, and the character animator used this as a great foundation for adding bags of extra personality through physical performance.

“The filming … was done by a small crew of fabulous people, all committed to sharing the important information around flooding, climate and protecting our natural habitats for future generations. I hope you enjoy watching it as much as we enjoyed making it!”

Graham Jackson-Pitt, Interim Director of Nature Recovery at Cumbria Wildlife Trust, said:

“Congratulations to the filmmakers of Wood You Believe It for this great accolade: winning this Science Film Festival award will bring the benefits of natural flood management to a much wider audience. Cumbria Wildlife Trust is working hard with local landowners, farmers and partners across Cumbria to make our landscape more resilient to the impacts of the climate crisis, including flooding and drought.”

‘Wood You Believe It’ is one of 4 films in the second of two series. The first series also won an award: at the Learning on Screen Awards in 2023.