At a time when the planet bends beneath the weight of overexploitation and climate chaos, informing is no longer enough: we must stir consciences and awaken sensitivity.
Poaching, intensive harvesting, clearcutting — these actions expose our blindness to the consequences of our utilitarian — and often destructive — relationship with the environment. The forest itself, along with the fauna and flora it shelters, seems to exist only to satisfy our growing needs for consumption, or merely to entertain us.
It is from this perspective that my film turns to the ethical, symbolic, and emotional dimensions of the bond between humans and the forest. It explores what this bond reveals about our society, our imagination, and our way of inhabiting the land. For behind disputes over usage lie stories, symbols, and emotions that rarely find their place in forest management debates.
I follow animals as well as several human figures — sometimes controversial, sometimes discreet — whose personal or professional lives are rooted in Quebec’s forest landscape. I observe them through the seasons, over a period of three years, seeking to understand how each, in their own way, relates to the forest, its wildlife, and its plants. The film does not follow a classical narrative centred on a single hero or heroine. Instead, it adopts a choral structure, unfolding like a melody built of stories that cross paths, sometimes echoing, sometimes contradicting each other. Some figures hold more space than others, who simply pass through. All contribute to sketching a complex, nuanced, and ever-evolving portrait of the forest and its challenges.
While my approach relies largely on observation, some characters may take a stand on specific issues. These positions allow me to weave a narrative thread and bring underlying political dynamics to the surface. Yet they are integrated gradually, fluidly, never didactically. I do not impose judgment. A standpoint emerges, of course — implicit in my choices of staging, editing, and in the gaze I cast on the protagonists and the places.
The tone of the film oscillates between realism, political engagement, and poetry. The camera is patient when observing animals, raw and naturalistic when capturing the everyday lives of people. At times, it slips into the dreamlike, evoking what the forest embodies beyond the visible: a place of life, memory, solace, conflict, and identity. The forest is not a new subject, yet it remains a powerful mirror of our contradictions and continues to challenge us. With this film, I seek to extend that reflection — not by providing answers, but by allowing sensations, tensions, and parallel narratives to emerge.
As Robert Altman said: “The deep structure of my films is an organization of feelings.”
And isn’t it precisely through feeling that we most naturally approach the forest as a symbol of our collective identity? An organization of feelings, to approach the forest differently — not as a resource, but as a living, inhabited, and shared space.
Pascale Ferland