Year
2026
Language
Italiaans, Duits, English spoken, English subtitles
Director
Victor Kossakovsky
Duration
105 min
After films about water (Aquarela) and concrete (Architecton), filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky turns his attention to trees. He observes Mancuso, who conducted groundbreaking research into the sensory experience of trees.
“What is the rarest material in the universe?” asks botanist Stefano Mancuso a group of school students. Exactly: wood. On Earth it is ubiquitous, but since it only occurs on our planet as far as we know, it is rarer on a cosmic scale than gold and diamonds.
The journey of filmmaker Kossakovsky and Mancuso begins in the Alps, where centuries-old pine forests fall victim to bark beetle infestations. Mancuso advocates for more diverse reforestation instead of what he calls "pine plantations." They also visit winter city squares where immense Christmas trees are erected. The industrial cultivation of all those millions of little Christmas trees that we have in our homes for a few weeks each year and then dump on the street produces surreal images: endlessly long, perfectly straight rows of man-high trees being tended to by a small army of men in moss-green military jackets.
Release date
11:45 AM - 1:30 PM
€ 11.50
Camera 5
10:30 AM - 12:15 PM
€ 11.50
Camera 1
It's not what you look at, it's what you see
International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam in Groningen is the chance to see next year's documentary hits on the big screen in advance.
