WEDNESDAY 19 NOV – H 20:30 – ROOM 2

WE ARE THE FOREST ENCLOSED BY THE WALL
AUSTRIA, ITALY – 2025 – color – 35’

Direction: Oliver Ressler
Cinematography: Oliver Ressler
Additional footage: Cosimo Pastore
Editing: Enar de Dios Rodríguez, Oliver Ressler
Colour correction: Rudolf Gottsberger
Producer: Oliver Ressler
Commissioner: Free Home University (Alessandra Pomarico, Nikolay Oleynikov)

Synopsis
The planned expansion of Porsche Engineering’s Nardo? Technical Centre threatens the very survival of the last forest left in the Puglia region of Southern Italy. The film focuses on the tireless efforts of the Arneo Forest Custodians to defend the forest within a territory already at risk of desertification, where millions of olive oil trees have been lost to bacteria, recurrent drought, salty water wells and wildfires. “We are the forest, we need the forest to live”, declares one of the custodians, affirming the inextricable relationship between human and more-than-human life. The film exposes the hypocrisy of an automotive industry that endangers ecosystems of inestimable value on pretexts of technological innovation.

director’s statement
“We are the forest” amounts to a powerful declaration: an affirmation of our bonds and interconnection with forests and a warning that the extinction of forests paves the way to extinction of both human and more-than-human lives, since we are all breathing organisms dependent on oxygen-generating forests. Thus a fight for a forest is not just a fight to conserve a site of recreation or adventure. It is also a struggle for universal survival and a life worth living.”

International premiere