Drifting Woods

Danish artist Pia Rönicke has been exploring Scandinavian forests as a changing historical and phenomenological space for several years. She draws inspiration from the concepts of ecologist Suzanne Simard, who sees the forest ecosystem as an arena where human and non-human life forms collide. Like the subterranean mycelium, this polyphonic film is not arranged hierarchically but in a network. In addition to the people connected to the forest and the land, it lets the trees themselves tell the story. Their non-linearly presented story begins at the end of the Ice Age and continues to the present day, when man has ripped the wood from its natural habitat and reduced it to an industrial commodity. (Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival)