Birational geometry of smooth families of varieties admitting good minimal models

Abstract We study families of projective manifolds with good minimal models. After constructing a suitable moduli functor for polarized varieties with canonical singularities, we show that, if not birationally isotrivial, the base spaces of such families support subsheaves of log-pluridifferentials with positive Kodaira dimension. Consequently we prove that, over special base schemes, families of this type can only be birationally isotrivial and, as a result, confirm a conjecture of Kebekus and Kovács.