- A war photographer embeds in a community of tree planters who overcome grueling conditions and emotional difficulties to bring back the forest.
- Award-winning war photographer Rita Leistner goes back to her roots as a tree planter in the wilderness of British Columbia, offering an inside take on the grueling, sometimes fun and always life-changing experience of restoring Canada's forests. Leistner, who has photographed some of the world's most dangerous places, credits the challenge of tree-planting for her physical and mental endurance. In Forest for the Trees, her first feature film, she revisits her past to share the lessons she learned. The film introduces us to everyday life on the "cut-block" and the brave souls who fight through rough terrains and work endless hours to bring our forests to life. The rugged BC landscape comes to life magically in Leistner's photography, while the quirky characters and nuggets of wisdom shared around the campfire tell a sincere story of community.—Melissa James
- The world of tree planting (i.e. the planting of seedlings in largely clear cut areas as a means of reforestation) is presented in photojournalist Rita Leistner, who was a tree planter herself several years ago for several years, interviewing those working in the industry, primarily tree planters but also support workers at the camps, in the field in central British Columbia from the years 2016 to 2019. With what is largely piece work for what ends up being the equivalent of minimum wage if that, the interviewees talk about what, beyond the need to pay rent or put food on the table, draws them to doing it, especially those that have done it for more than one season and thus know what to expect in returning. With one interviewee describing the work as a combination of industrial labor and extreme sport burning the equivalent energy of running two and half marathons a day, the draw to it is despite most admitting to shedding tears of emotional and/or physical pain more than once a day. They also talk about the dichotomy of the isolation in the work being solitary even if one is in a planting pair, against the camaraderie between them in only they understanding through what they are going.—Huggo
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