The EcoFocus Film Festival has returned for its second year in Athens.

The festival, which began Friday, is part of an initiative of the Eugene P. Odum School of Ecology.

Ten films highlighting environmental or ecological topics will be shown at Ciné throughout the month.

“Last year we did a weekend, like a three and a half day festival,” said Sara Beresford, festival director. “Instead of squishing them all into one weekend, we are going to spread them out over the month.”

Beresford said two to three feature length films will be introduced each Friday, and will be shown through the next Thursday.

And though the festival focuses on environmental films, Beresford stressed it is not a typical environmental film festival.

“We’re really trying to get across that the films are just great films in the first place, and they just happen to be about environmental subjects,” she said. “We are trying to help people get over that hump of thinking that an environmental film, by definition, has to be preachy or boring or didactic.”

She also said she’d like to see the number of students attending increase this year.

“Even though we are a University initiative, we had a hard time last year getting students to come to the festival,” Beresford said.

But this year, to gain more student viewers, Beresford said there will be three on-campus events in addition to the regular film schedule at Ciné.

On Wednesday, the Tate Student Center Theater will be the first theater in the state to showcase the documentary “No Impact Man,” a film tracking a family’s year-long efforts to live without creating waste.

“There is a lot of buzz about it right now,” Beresford said. “It’s a good film, and I think particularly appealing to the college student crowd.”

But film isn’t the only thing the festival has to offer this year. On Oct. 17 there will be a Geodome/Our New Silence party at Ciné, which will feature an interactive event called the Geodome Project.

“The Geodome is basically this inflatable dome, or a portal,” Beresford said. “We are using the portal because that can be set up in the theater. With this portal they have this visualization software, and they can do anything from looking at the Universe or looking at different parts of Earth. It’s sort of this big 3-D atlas of the universe.”

For scheduling and ticket prices, visit www.ecofocusfilmfest.org.