Freyung and Neuschonau, Germany: The International Nature and Wildlife Film Festival Features an Open-Air Cinema in the Bavarian Forest

NaturVision, the International Nature and Wildlife Film Festival, is held annually in Freyung and Neuschönau in the Bavarian Forest -- the largest continuous forested area in Europe. The festival runs four days each September and centers on documentary films about animals, wild landscapes, and exotic regions, with a competitive program judged by an international jury.

Its open-air cinema is one of the most distinctive venues in the festival circuit: the screen is installed directly in a lake at Neuschönau, so audiences watch films surrounded by forest and water. Evening screenings culminate in a gala awards night on Saturday.

Each year the festival adopts a single theme. Past topics have included wolves -- a subject made vivid when three young wolves escaped from the National Park's wolf habitat enclosure the year prior, two of them fatally. The festival opens on the eve of the full moon, when participants gather in the National Park to listen for wolf calls.