Synopsis

In 2013, with support from the Australian government, the major forestry companies in Tasmania submitted an unusual request to UNESCO: to declassify thousands of hectares of old-growth forest. The appetite of these unscrupulous industrialists scandalized the entire world, triggering an unprecedented mobilization to save the immense Tasmanian rain forest. Standing on a rocky spur on the Southern Ocean, the Tasmanian forest is home to some of the world’s oldest species of plants and animals. A legacy of an exceptional geological history, this large Australian island is an extraordinary conservatory of Atlantic biodiversity: for scientists, the value of its large pines and giant eucalyptus trees is incalculable. Activists, descendents of the Aborigines and the first lumberjacks have come together to save one of the world’s unique natural heritages.  

Reinventing forest series

Rather than focusing on the large forests already destroyed or threatened such as Indonesia, today’s the center of attention, this series chooses to highlight the large mutating forest massifs, which are helped by some promising actions.   It offers a discovery of these precious biotopes through the changes that are taking place and the people who make it happen: agronomists, lumberjacks, engineers, hunters, biologists, anthropologists or forest wardens, they all contribute to rethink these massifs and shape their future.   Each film helps us understand the bond the local populations have with these surprising massifs: sometimes they grew up there, sometimes they live there, and often it is their workplace, their livelihood.    

Why this choice?

A fascinating trip inside a barely-known forest, on a discovery of the biggest trees in the world.   How can we chop down huge trees, which took hundreds, even thousands of years to grow, to make paper or hardwood floors, in just a few minutes?   This film forces us to question our relationship to this millennial and wild nature and takes us along with the people who have made the commitment to preserve it.