Story
For over a year the Dannenrod Forest in Germany was occupied by climate-activists, who lived in treehouses upto 30 meters high to protect it from clearing for a new motorway. From Oct 2020 the extraction by the police and the cutting of the trees started. The documentary BARRICADE follows the activists through their actions, their dreams and their music and is with them, when finally the last treehouses fell in the first week of December 2020.
The documentary has a duration of 83 minutes and is filmed in 2,36:1 stereo.
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The Documentary
I had my first contact with the occupants of Dannenrod Forest on an assignment for Greenpeace Magazine Germany. It was early Summer 2020 and there were not too many activists in the forest. The atmosphere was rather relaxed, some coffee was boiling on a selfmade fireplace and in the distance some hammering could be heard. But still the beautiful woods were peaceful and calm.
Two months later I came back in September to start my documentary filmproject and everything had changed by then. Many new treehouses have been build, wooden defence structures like treepods and barriers stood on most pathways and the forest was full of young and older people ready to defend this old grown ecosystem. It was like Sherwood Forest going to war.
And going to war it was. At the time the cutting tree season started, the beginning of October, an armada of police flocked into the area, sometimes around 2.000 a day. They worked their way through the treehouse villages, called barrios, one by one. Extracted the activists and right afterwards trees were cut. Finally, on Dec 8th the very last treehouses fell and the route for the new to be build motorway A49 was cleared.
BARRICADE is about the last peaceful weeks in the forest and close with the activists during the extraction time. It shows the beauty and simpleness of live in the woods and explains the ideas of a young generation that fights against a system that wants to “keep on going like always”.
